93 x 3

Eklund Motorsport will have three Saab 93s in its stable for the start of the 2012 season. Veteran racer, turned team owner Per Eklund spent the 2011 season concentrating his efforts on Finnish protégé Toomas Heikkinen, but also drove in two ERC rounds himself. The car that Heikkinen raced was a completely new 93, the third of the ‘Aero’ models built at Eklund’s Arvika base. The new car was the first built to use a Sellholm transmission in place of the Prodrive gearboxes that the first two 93s, as well as Eklund’s earlier ‘Saabarus’, had relied upon. The Sellholm system allowed the engine in the car to be placed more advantageously, giving the car a better balance.

Under the guidance of lead engineer Per Anders Eklund, Per’s son, the team then converted one of its older cars to use the Sellholm transmission, this the machine used by Eklund in his ERC outings at Höljes and Sosnová. Eklund Jnr. is now converting the team’s third car in the same manner.

“I sold the Prodrive gearboxes to the Subaru team in America and the Sellholm makes the car much better to drive now, it’s like a new car,” said Eklund, “I have the car and we have time in the winter to convert it so it makes sense to have all three cars ready to race. I don’t know what we will do yet, I hope that Toomas will continue because he had a very good year and I think we can do more with him to get even better results.

“We can run a car for another driver and Toomas has shown that it’s competitive so it would be good to have two cars in the European championship but there’s also the possibility to send a car to America. There’s interest over there but we need to have the budget to go,” said Per who has no idea if he will drive regularly himself in 2012.

“I don’t know. Of course I will probably do some events, Höljes and maybe something in Sweden if there’s a car, it’s still fun to drive,” said the 65-year-old Swede.

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