Saab Replay was founded in 1996 in Berkeley, California, by Ben Rono. Saab Replay began as a hobby shop to help fund college and personal projects.

Randy Roche, with his extremely diverse automotive background, has worked in nearly every crevice of the industry. His experience spans from his industry family (father ran a GM dealership in Pennsylvania). But Randy had no interest in GM products and got his first car, a '68 VW bug, at 15!

He began working at a body shop after school, then as a custom car audio installer on competition installs. Bosch ECU reman/testing facility (Saab and Volvo units), as an auto auction wholesaler, appraiser for damaged Porsche cars, and wore many hats at his family’s “Porsche authorized” shop building OE conversions, race cars, and custom builds (just to name some of his experiences).This introduced him to the racing world with Holberts Racing, as well as SCCA GT2/3.

Randy also handled the shop’s branding/advertising while becoming an industry creative for 10 years before moving to San Francisco in 2005, where he continued his creative profession when he soon met Ben Rono while seeking local fellow Saab enthusiasts. The two quickly connected, creating unique projects like a Porsche 914 powered by a Saab Motronic fuel management system.

In 2007, Randy took ownership of Saab Replay when Ben started a family and moved back to Boston. Ben almost shut down the business until Randy stepped in to save the shop and its strong community. Randy nearly opened a cafe in San Francisco, but the deal fell through, allowing Saab Replay to continue thriving. Things happen for a reason!

For the next decade, we took SaabReplay to the next level! We drastically increased our customer base, and service area. We took over the tenants next door and expanded our footprint to accommodate a showroom, a customer area with a racing simulator and hosted regular SAAB events with bike trials demos (as Randy is a 20yr trials bike rider) Randy continued to grow the shop and the team as dealerships and other indy Saab shops retired. We gained a huge positive reputation for our commitment to the Saab community as well as the local community. This really fueled our passion for SAAB! Our shop was also locally known for its 3 black shop cats (Charlie, Griffen and Mr Whiskers). Randy had a grand vision to find a bigger location to start up a local SAAB MUSEUM with an event space to support car cultures, public events, food and bev areas, podcasting area, classes and more. And it couldnt be a better time, we were on the fence of losing our property due to an old, antiquated zoning law that the city refused to reconsider which would result in the demo of our iconic space! That got ugly…

All was good, despite losing a 1-year battle with city counsel and developers to turn Saab Replay into a parking lot! We faced bureaucracy and a new neighbor who thought he’d “fix the neighborhood” by ignorantly harassing neighboring properties, like illegally removing a hummingbird habitat and repeatedly complaining to the city. For us, he just caused trouble, like the bar guy in “My Cousin Vinny.”

Thankfully, we found a great new location perfect for our vision for the Saab museum and public space! But the city paperwork took longer than expected, and we had to be “hard out” of the old space. We asked our realtor to offer the new landlord a cold “storage fee” for our moving truck and cars until the paperwork went through. He didn't take it seriously and said nothing. The truck was parked in front of the shop. We have watchful neighbors and a security team that drives by every 30min…

On a Wednesday morning at 9:45am, our moving truck was stolen, containing employees' toolboxes, our shop equipment, event equipment, and everything needed to set up and start working. Randy drove around all day and night, gathered local cam footage. We eventually located the 26ft Penske truck the next morning. Of course It had been emptied of valuables, and anything left was severely damaged.

Wanna add insult to injury? Local cameras showed the truck was left on the same block in Oakland where Randy had stopped to take a break while looking, nearly 30 minutes prior! Cam footage also showed the thieves in route driving a 2004 black Saab 9-3 sedan, and parked in front of our truck. Our security team pulled up to open the gate for the trash truck, the thieves made small talk with the security driver, walked off, got into the truck as if they had a key, and drove off within a few minutes.

Turns out, the Penske 26ft “Hino” type trucks are super easy to steal. They have no shift lock, steering lock, or ignition security. The GPS looked ripped out, with wires hanging down from the console. Penske stonewalled us when we confronted them. We were responsible for the box, but they should be responsible for not allowing the whole truck to be taken. They wouldn't even say if the GPS was down or not. It's as if they know it will be stolen, collect insurance, buy the trucks back at salvage price, knowing they will be recovered because, well, criminals only want the contents. Someone should look into that… Meanwhile we dipped into private investigation to uncover one of the 2 thieves.

Our Nationwide policy topped out at $100k, so we lost there, and the claim took so long that we had to pull the plug on the new space, the museum, THE VISION! For now.. .Then, COVID-19 lockdown hit a few weeks later. That further delayed the insurance company until eventually, they denied our claim, stating it breached their policy on claim resolution time with some legal verbiage. Lawyers weren’t interested in a “small” $100k case, especially during lockdown.

Fortunately, an old Porsche colleague kindly offered to share his old shop space and warehouse until things ironed out. We got the cars together in the warehouse and used his shop space/equipment until we got back on our feet. That worked “okay for now,” but less than a year later, while Randy was leaving the shop, the shop office bag was stolen, containing the shop computer, tablet, phones, checks, and his personal items such as his passport. That was a mess.

Randy was close to retrieving the bag as he interrogated the nearby homeless camp. Then, less than the next year, a homeless tent caught fire, spreading to our building. Fortunately, our space and cars were spared, except for one parts-car. Unbelievable, Randy found his bag where the tent was, charred by the fire. The building was compromised by loss of power, security, needed repairs, and all the doors were broken by the fire dept, thankfully, they saved the building! Due to insurance reasons, it took the landlord a while to restore the building.

Needless to say, our income suffered through these multiple costly setbacks. We lost a bulk of our daily services during COVID (mostly to new car purchases). However, our restorations jobs increased, which is Randy’s specialty and passion, saving these wonderful cars by bringing them back to their deserved condition. So we are aiming our sails in that direction, but now here comes the holiday slump we must prepare for every year.

But this season, something else was brewing to thwart our progress yet again. Since our sales are way down near 75%, October 2023, we got a sales tax assessment, resulting in a levy on our POS, freezing our accounts. Ouch. That really put a log in our cogs!

Nowadays, we are still struggling and downsizing until things settle up again. We graciously thank all our customers and the Saab community for supporting us through this ridiculous time. As a fundraiser, we must sell off a bulk of our Saab vehicle inventory. Many of these will be sold and delivered as-is. Most of these cars are running projects with tasks that need to be completed.

We also sell our cars built to suit. Customers purchase a Saab, pay in full, and choose their options “built to suit” on an invoice over a scheduled period. This has worked well for many customers, and we plan to focus and streamline this experience.

We still have the vision for the Saab museum/car culture space, but our river’s run dry. If you want to get involved and share the vision, have space available to accommodate our vision, or can offer financial support with similar interests, get in touch with us. Especially if you are a Saab enthusiast and have experience with law, finance, investing, nonprofit, museum or gallery interests, etc. Let’s make something happen!

Cheers!