Junkyard Find: 1987 Saab 900S
About five years ago, the Saab 900 was a relatively common sight in American self-service wrecking yards, but now examples of this Saab 99 descendant are getting rare.
Here’s a non-turbo 900S that I spotted not long ago in a Denver yard.
Almost 200,000 miles, but this Swedish steel will go to The Crusher just 1,390 miles short of that milestone. A weekend road trip from Denver to Des Moines and back would have done the trick.
The interior has some sun-bleaching, but looks good for a 28-year-old car.
The naturally aspirated 16-valve four-cylinder engine in this car made 125 horsepower, which was pretty good for an engine based on the Triumph Slant-4, of TR7 fame.
Of course, Saab had made many improvements to the engine design since the British Leyland days.
How many of us have been burned by a junkyard radio that needs an unobtainable security code to function?
Not rusty, not smashed. Maybe this car developed some expensive mechanical problem (i.e., any mechanical problem) that wasn’t worth fixing, or maybe it was a trade-in that no dealer could sell.
Here’s the complete Saab lineup for 1987 or 1988, including the Viggen airplane (which went out of production a few years later).
Does Geely make jets? HELL NO.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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SAAB began it's slow decline once GM took over in the 90's. Switching everything to GM platforms and parts resulted in simply a restyled Malibu...with equal poor GM quality. Then when times got tough, GM killed them off. Probably a good thing. Who wanted to pay a premium price for a redone Malibu? Certainly not a premium car shopper!
I would rather SAAB die with some dignity, than part of the GM junkpile. They almost killed Suzuki too, fortunately, after GM ruined their reputation and sales here...they chose to back out. Saving their lives. Anyway...RIP SAAB!