75 years of Saab spirit at the Saabfestival 2022 – part 2

For many Saab 9-5NG and 9-4X owners visiting the Saabfestival 2022, Friday 10 June was a highly anticipated day… the day of a very special photoshoot with 105 9-5NG Sedans, 6 9-5NG SportCombis and 16 9-4Xes on the Saab test track!

A truly special venue

During the previous similar shoots in 2017 and 2019, we had been lucky enough to be in unique “Saabish” locations (the Trollhättan/Vänersborg Airport and the parking in front of the former Saab factory), but this time we were truly privileged to to find ourselves on the test track on the factory grounds. For numerous reasons we had been asked to keep the location quiet until the very last minute and when the venue for this photo shoot was finally revealed, several cheers of joy were heard among the crowd that had gathered on the parking area outside of the NEVS technical facilities on Friday afternoon. The Saab test track has namely always been kept very restricted, primarily because of the nature of the facilities, and very few “outsiders” had seen it in real life- let alone driven on it with their own cars!

Where are the drone pictures?

Flying a drone in a restricted area (we were just literally a few meters away from an airfield that was in full operations!) is a huge challenge in itself, but I was lucky enough to be granted permission by air traffic control to send my drone up in the air for a few minutes to capture this very unique gathering of the latest (and last) Saab models. In most countries in the world, that permission from the Trollhättan tower would have sufficed to more or less immediately publish the materials. Sadly, the rules in Sweden are different as a formal distribution permit is required if one wants to spread material that depicts Sweden from the air (see the official Lantmäteriet website for more info). While normally this permit process takes up to two days, there appear to be much longer waiting times at the moment. So more info as soon as I hear back from them in the coming week or so!