This week’s guest is former Saab Parts Director Doug Williams. Doug worked in the Norcross, GA headquarters in the late 90’s through his early retirement in 2001. During his tenure the parts division moved over 100 million in parts and accessories per year with the help of a dedicated staff. Innovative ideas were put into place such as overnight dedicated delivery to dealers of parts and Saab badged delivery trucks traveling all over the Northeastern USA. My favorite was the view of a Gripen fighter jet afterburner on the back doors of the trucks. Doug also talks about his 25 years with Jaguar prior to joining Saab and many of the celebrities he met in his career.

I am joined in this week’s episode by long time Saab employee Gary Dagesse. Gary has had numerous field and management positions at Saab. He started in the early 90’s and stayed up until almost the very end of the Spyker years in 2011. He also worked for Ford, Porsche, Jaguar/Land Rover and Nissan and talks about his experiences in the non-Saab world. He also just recently completed a lifelong bucket list goal by visiting all 30 baseball stadiums ending up in Toronto at the Rogers Center, formerly the Skydome where his wife arranged a nice surprise for his birthday.

One of my many ex-bosses, my mentor, my sometimes life coach and most of all my friend, Mike Raflowitz joins me on the Podcast. Mike had a long and varied career at Saab ranging from Field Representative to operating Saab of Japan (thus the Saab Japanese intro). Mike "Raf" is fun to talk to and is a great story teller and he has some great ones from almost running over a group of astronomers in a Saab to illegally crossing the Finnish border into Russia! Enjoy.

This episode's guest is former Saab Training Department member Dave Kapitulik.  "Kap" details his road to being an educator and training instructor/course designer at Saab Automobiles. 

Join me for our first episode featuring ex-Saab Field Representatives John Ritter and John Sokol. We discuss how each became interested in the automotive business, their long careers at Saab, their favorite meetings, brushes with celebrity, life after Saab and much more.