Not many of us have to wait until we're forty to get our first company car. For reasons far too complicated to explain, I did. Having kicked off in 1984 with a £250 Morris Marina (gorgeous in sun-faded red), worked my way through a Triumph Herald 13/60 convertible (written off by a moonlighting Chinese chauffeur in a Cadillac), made do with a 1 litre VS Polo (lean recession years) and then completed the century with a 1995 900S, I've finally got my tax inefficient wheels.

Since January I've been tooling around in a brand new Saab 9-3 2.0 T SE with five doors. The first thing you notice about this car is the colour, which is the Saab Sun Green. Sounds odd. When did the sun last look green to you? - after doing a bottle of Chartreuse the night before, probably. But in the flesh it's quite stunning. A bit like the surface of a deep lake. It needs to be kept clean though, and when it's got a tide mark around its waist it's not so pretty.

The ride in my old 900 was not too smooth. In town it picked up every pot hole and tarmac imperfection you could find and told my spine all about it. The 9-3, while not perfect, is far better and the heavier the load the smoother things get.

Inside it smells just dandy. I've got a five-year-old and when he's on board with his mates wiping goo, spittle and general sweetie rubbish everywhere, fabric seats are hopeless. Leather is the only way forward when you're accompanied by junior youth on the move. One wipe with a damp sponge and you can even get half a regurgitated Curly Wurly off. I could live without the walnut facing on the dashboard, though. Dark grey or black Scandinavian plastic makes better sense.

The engine is a stormer and it's just about sufficiently well sorted to get most of that power down onto the road. 185 bhp makes it faster over the nought to sixty dash than my sad middle-aged crisis-afflicted mate, who's left his wife and bought himself an Audi TT. And I can get a five years olds bike into mine. You couldn't get a Tonka toy into the back of that TT.

Funnily enough the thing I most look forward to is the sound system. The Clarion CD player I put into the old 900 was terrific. This is almost as good. Saab sounds always seem pretty impressive to me. Compared to the basic kit they bung in BMW's or Audis, it's like being in the Albert Hall. Which is as well because with the traffic the way it is in London these days, there's plenty of sitting around listening to "The Simpsons Sing the Blues" CD for us at the moment. When Homer does "Born Under a Bad Sign" it's enough to make you drive up onto the kerb in laughter. (Not good for those sparkling alloys, that!).

This month's Road Test was very kindly written by Matthew Gwyther who is an Editor of a London based Publishing Company.