One of these events happened this weekend in Marianske udoli near Brno. A good programme for families with or without children or an opportunity to learn something new about a foreign culture. To organise an event for 2-3.000 people requires some funding, which was provided by the Embassy of Sweden, The Scandinavian House as well as several companies, so at this social event was present also a product advertisement but in reasonable amounts. Children had fun, I've learned something new at one of the presentations about the islands and sea near Stockholm and everybody was more or less happy.
One of the ladies from the Saabunderground.cz crew had the good idea to offer to the organisators a small exhibition of Saab cars, undoubtly belonging to the picture of Sweden in the world. According to her, it took a bit time for them to understand, that nobody wants any money from anyone, that just a fan club offers something unusual which fits into the concept very well. After this they welcomed the offer. Of course :)
Saabunderground guys invited me and I was delighted to join them. Part of the event was a small competition in camembert preparation, everybody did it on their own style. To me it hasn't to have a winner, all of the styles were Nr.1.
One of the magnets was a beautiful Saab 96 restored by an enthusiast. Everything restored with heart and original parts with some very nice details. The owner gladly explained everything to everybody. See the picture below, some other pics are here. The owner (with the black Saab cap on the back side of the car) knows everything about the car, to the smallest detail. The restoration from a car standing last 15 years in a dusty, wet and falling garage took ~1 year.
Another magnet was this Saab 99 car in "police tuning" :) I saw it more times at pictures but didn't know who it belongs to. So was a nice surprise when it came driven by a friend from the saabunderground crew. More pictures are located here.
Then there were present a this 900NG cabrio, 2x 9000, couple of 9-3's, my 9-3 cabrio and this 9-5.
I never thought, that once I buy a car, I will go to exhibit it somewhere. I know it is a charismatic and very intelligent designed car, but exhibition is something completely different. At least I thought so. So my ego was massaged, because many people were going around my car as well, asking questions, making pictures, young ladies asked for pictures sitting in the cockpit etc. At the end it was a great feeling to sit into the car and drive 150km back home through backroads and without the roof.
I wondered a bit about the absence of Volvo as well as someone from local Saab dealers with a car. Of course they were contacted. They had a unique opportunity to showcase the new 9-5 (they have couple of them) in confrontation to older models. In a very natural context and for free. There were some 2-3.000 people, families with children, some of them well established according to some cars I've seen there parking.
The excuse "it's Saturday" doesn't count. It's black or white - either I like my work and do it with passion nearly non-stop or not. Another statement saying "the community doesn't mean too much to us, they will never buy a new Saab" smells after amateurism and short-time thinking. A car like Saab doesn't sell itself through bilboards, catalogues and some rides with a display car. The awareness must be awaken and maintained drop by drop, in creative ways and long-term. In the fan family are many people which are candidates for a new Saab. I am one of them. Or the 9-5 mentioned before is a company car. Look at the picture above, do you see the couple (boy in white, lady in green) looking at a possible family car ? There were tons of such couples. I understand, that dealers, historically Opel, Chevrolet and Saab are promoting more selling cars, but why they do Saab then ? And why Saab doesn't let it to do people with passion ? If the current Saab crisis goes good, Saab has a big problem with channel and its reactive (maybe even not that) instead of proactive approach. If someone from Saab reads this, please be aware of this and take some actions. If a partner doesn't care about the vendor, the numbers will never go up. It's same in Slovakia btw... Enough business talk ...
I didn't waited for the end of the Midsummer event, which usualy ends with a big bonfire, I had 150km driving back home. One strange thing happened on that day. There were 2-3 rainshowers through the day. Through one of them i was sitting in the car, playing with the navigation and learned how to include a place catched by the GPS into the adress book / database. So I did it. On my way home, after some 15km I've realised, that I forgot my camera there. Since the place has no adress and this part of the world is weakly covered in the GPS navigation, I would have a problem to find it again. But the adress book entry was ready and I was back pretty quickly. Karma ?
The way back was very comfortable. I took this road. It's not that strong to recommend it in a separate blog entry, but it was a nice cabrioway home accompanied with some sharp groovy funk music mix.
I'd like to express my thanks to the saabunderground.cz crew for the organisation and invite. It was very fine to see you and looking forward to our next meeting somewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment