Often times it is difficult to know what to get someone for the holidays. As my family and friends already know, I can be a difficult person to buy gifts for. So I’m providing info and tips for what is hot this holiday season for the geek in your life who also happens to be a Saab nut.

Anyone who enjoys working on cars often times has a wish list of things they would like to buy for their car, or things they would like to do to their car. Here are some suggestions of things to get for the Saab Enthusiast. These are this years hot items:

Front Mount Inter Cooler (FMIC), $90 + shipping – Many Saab lovers that are tuning a classic 900 desire to mount a FMIC to the front of their car to help improve their turbo charging system. The FMIC acts to help cool the air after it passes through the turbo and on into the engine. Definitely one of the bigger ticket items to make a Saab guy happy.

Gauges and Gauge Cluster – When improving and tuning a car, it is always helpful to have live information about the condition of the engine. This is where a 3-gauge DIN cluster that mounts in the radio slot comes in handy. With a Boost Gauge ($68.95), Air/Fuel Gauge ($71.95), and a Water Temp Gauge ($60.96), you can add character and better improve performance of you Saab.

Another big ticket item this year is the JT 3″ Downpipe ($257) for the exhaust system. By upgrading to a 3″ downpipe you can better imrove the flow of the engine so the turbo can spool better for improved power and performance.

As always, a Saab enthusiast can never have enough tools. No Saab tuner should be without a full set of (metric) ratchet wrenches ($179.99). These ratcheting wrenches can mean the difference between a 30 minute job and an hour long job, and save your knuckes as well.

For those who may be wondering what is on my Christmas wish list this year…  one item is a new FMIC for my Saab 900 SPG    I found a good one on ebay that would work very nicely.

So yesterday I went down to the Rock Falls Raceway in Eau Claire WI. with some of my Saab buddies for “SportsCompact Days”. RockFalls is a 1/4 mile track, and yesterday was the last day of the season to race, so it was PACKED!!! Darren brough his 9-3 Viggen, and I brought my 900SE. Both of our cars are stock, so we didn’t expect too much. I just wanted to see what mine could do stock before I start modding it.

Anyways, since it was so packed there, we only got 3 runs in on the time-trials. They lined everyone into lanes, and ran 2 cars at a time down the track. Once you ran, you got back in line to wait for the next run. They were doing time-trials until Noon, and were then going to do bracket racing, where they match people up with others that had similar time runs, and break down for eliminations. We didn’t want to stick around that long, so we left to go over to the Technical College where another friend of ours was doing AutoCross with his Miata.

For being my first time on the track, I feel I did pretty good. I had some decent launches, and my trap times weren’t that bad either. Especially for my car to be 10 years old, bone stock. I was running consistent low 16s, and hitting 89mph in the 1/4 mile. One thing I need to remember is that Saabs are not built for the low-end. We have very little low-end torque, and our turbos are handicapped in 1st and 2nd gears. So it leaves room for improvement.

Once I finish paying for my new SPG, I’m going to start working on upgrading my 900SE. I think I’ll probably end up going with a 3″ DP and exhaust kit from GenuineSaab.com and then go with a Stage3 Nordic Tune. That will take my 185HP car to ~270HP. Then with a Cold-Air intake and cone filter, my car will breathe better, and I should be able to go from low 16s to mid 14s. Even though I’m not a fan of 1/4 sprint racing, it was definately fun. But I would definately like to try AutoCross, and some form of Rally Racing.

So on Saturday I organized a small impromptu cookout at Fort Snelling Park in St. Paul. This was with a bunch of the people from SaabCentral.com and SaabLink.net a couple of Saab forums that I chat on.

We had a pretty nice turnout of 7 cars. One of the guys (with the red 900 vert) had to leave before we could take the picture with all of us and our cars.

It was fun though I’m jealous of Andy’s ‘86 900Turbo, man alive would I like to get a car like that. So pristine, so classic, so fast!  And with only 68k on the odometer!