If you have already made the decision to buy yourself a Saab, then well done. They are great cars, and I and my Family have been driving them for years. I always argue that they may not be the most ostentatious or even design led cars on the market, but they are certainly good-looking vehicles that have an almost unsurpassed reputation for performance and reliability. I much prefer the secure and trustworthy feel of the drive in a Saab to the slightly wilder feel of the market alternatives!

So, if you are buying a Saab then you will have a few steps in front of you. First and probably most important is to work out your budget, so you know if you want or need a brand new Saab model, or a used Saab instead. Personally I would always advice to opt for the used models, even if you only buy one a couple of years old (or even younger!), because you will make such significant savings on the automatic cost price! Even if you are good at bartering down the new car dealers prices, it is very unlikely that you will be able to get a better price than you would on a used one!

Once you know your budget (and of course what car model best suits your needs), then you are probably at the point where you have explored your local Saab dealers and found a few possible purchases. Each will no doubt have their own set of advantages and disadvantages, but there will be a few that have caught you attention and which are already standing out from the crowd. Before you part with you hard earned cash, however, you will need to organise taking each and every potential car out for a thorough test drive.

Test drives are all too often under-emphasised in terms of importance, but I consider them to be one of the most important tools at a car buyers disposal. They allow you to not only experience the general way the car drives (performance, acceleration, comfort and so on), but to identify any potential problems and troublesome areas before you put your hand in your pocket and hand over the cash.

I advise that you take the car on a comprehensive test drive about twice before you buy it. Ensure that you try out fast roads, slow roads, and also different road surfaces, so that you have the full picture about how it performs. In a similar vein, it is vital to see how it corners, and check out the breaking and steering fully you dont want to buy it and find out its wheel alignment is severely out. If you know cars, a test drive like this can show you areas that will need fixing, and these may even be worth using as bargaining chips to use in battling down the price.

All in all a test drive can tell you a whole lot of things that you wouldnt have known about your Saab otherwise and that is why they are so vital!