#Saab

Saab hasn’t been a thing in several years, but the funky Swedish cars still have a significant enthusiast following. After the company went defunct in 2016, its assets were eventually picked up by a company called New Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS). A Chinese company purchased the new entity and faced bankruptcy before a group of investors stepped in to save it, which  could revive plans for a new 600-mile EV.

We haven't featured a Saab in UCOTD in a while, so here's one. This 2008 Saab 9-3 reminds me that Saab still existed 15 years ago.

This 2009 Saab 9-3 Combi is for sale for just $600.

When the arms manufacturer known as Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget built its first production automobile, the goofy-looking 1950 Saab 92, that company's best-known product was the goofy-looking fighter jet known as the "Flying Barrel." Both the aircraft and cars got the job done, but it wasn't until the late 1960s that Saab built a jet that looked just as cool as the hippest Lockheeds and Mikoyan-Gureviches. At around the same time, Saab introduced its first car that wasn't viewed by non-Scandinavians as an oddball machine for eccentrics: The 99. Here's one of those cars, found in a self-service yard just south of Denver.

The name Sonett has precisely zero connection with the fourteen-line poems Shakespeare was so adept at writing; those are sonnets. Instead, it comes from a Swedish slang expression: Så nätt den är, which I’m told translates more or less to mean “how neat it is.” And neat the little front-drive sportsters are. The first SAAB Sonett was a roadster of compelling curvaceousness. It debuted in 1956, and the trolls in Trollhättan built precisely half a dozen of them. 

These days, it’s hard to imagine a company better positioned to take on Tesla than Geely-owned Volvo and Polestar. Volvo made headlines back in 2015 when it promised that all new Volvos would be electrified starting in 2019 and ruffled more feathers when it spun off its successful motorsports brand, Polestar, into a purely electrified performance car line. Parent company Geely’s Chinese heritage allows Volvo nearly unfettered access to the all-important Chinese market and allows the company to benefit from economies of scale – through the Geely, Lynk & Co., and Zeekr car lines – that it simply wouldn’t be able to realize on its own.Over the past 10-or-so years, the Swedish company – once on the verge of extinction – has flourished, going from strength to strength. Ford looks absolutely ridiculous for having sold Volvo, now valued at more than $20 billion, to Geely for “just” $1.5 billion ( with Polestar going for another $20 billion, all on its own) back in 2010.Sure, Ford wanted to fire-sale Volvo – but Ford wasn’t the only troubled American car company holding on to a respected Swedish car brand looking to make some fast cash. With a push here and a nudge there, Geely could have bought Saab, instead.

I’m back with more boring used car content, a topic some of you apparently despise with a passion. Caution: More used-car discussion ahead, get out while you still can if this is the case! For the rest of you, let’s review the impractical car suggestions you’ve made that earned a spot on the Yes, I Like list.

Today’s article is a follow up to the one from about a week ago, wherein I outlined my current used car shopping idea: something fairly impractical with two doors. The article racked up 195 comments thus far, and I’ve read them all and taken notes.

Let’s get down to your suggestions. First up are the cars I won’t be considering.

Today we return once more to the Saab 900. You may recall our first featured 900, a very early green on green example from 1979. Today’s refreshed and sportified 900 is substantially different from its older brother to warrant another look.

The General had a healthy sales hit with the GMT360 platform in the 2002 model year, when the new Chevrolet Trailblazer, GMC Envoy, and Oldsmobile Bravada hit the showrooms. Since GM had devoured Saab in 2000 and most American car shoppers wanted trucks or truck-shaped machines by that point, it seemed to make sense to produce a Saab-badged GMT360 and extract some cash from that slice of the car-buying populace that craved both the rugged-lifestyle signifiers of a truck and the quirky-yet-sensible Swedish image of a Saab. The Isuzu-badged version— the Ascender— had had its debut for 2004, and so the Saab 9-7X appeared for 2005 (sadly, no Daewoo- or Vauxhall-badged versions were produced). Here’s a first-model-year 9-7X, found in a Denver self-service yard last week.

During my years of documenting discarded Saabs in junkyards around the country ( and in Saab’s homeland), I’ve managed to cover the pre-GM American-market models well enough, with a special focus on the 900. In recent years, I’ve been working to cover some of the Saabs from the period of General Motors influence (1989-2000) and control (2000-2010).

I may never find an example of the ultra-rare 9-4x, but it’s easy to find used-up Opel Vectra-based 9-3 these days — and I vowed to photograph the first one I saw on a recent Denver junkyard expedition. That car turned out to be this Silver Metallic 2002 9-3 SE hatchback.

In various places on the automobile Internets, one will often see the same misconceptions and myths repeated over and over, presented as strong opinion or perhaps even disguised as fact. There are an awful lot of car fans who are dead wrong about a lot of things on the Internet. Let’s talk about it.

The original Saab 900 was a favorite of Colorado car shoppers during its 1979-1994 sales run, and I still see many of these cars during research expeditions to my local yards. So many, in fact, that I neglect to photograph most of them.

When I visited some of Phoenix’s excellent yards while on my way to work at the final 24 Hours of Lemons race before the Covid-19 menace shut down such gatherings, though, I spotted this ’86 900S and realized I need to document more of these interesting machines.

Weird examples of badge engineering! Who doesn’t love them? Bad people, that’s who, and so I do my best to find such vehicles while I’m exploring car graveyards. The badge-engineering world includes Isuzus badged as Hondas, Hondas badged as Isuzus, Mitsubishis badged as Dodges, Dodges badged as Mitsubishis, Chevrolets badged as Saabs, and — of course — Subarus badged as Saabs. Here’s an example of the notorious Saabaru, found in the Subiest region of the United States: Denver, Colorado.

Last week we played a round of Armchair Alternative History where we discussed missed opportunities in the automotive industry. Conversation focused on actions automakers didn’t take when they should’ve.

Today is round two. Let’s go back and erase things that actually happened.