After one and a half years of this series, we’ve seen just two Swedish cars in their final parking spaces: a Saab 900 and a Volvo 244. We’ll improve on that total today, with a rare Trollhättan classic that I recently found in a Denver car graveyard.
Colorado junkyards tend to be waspy places in summer, but this old Swede set my personal record for quantity of active wasp nests on a single vehicle. It was surrounded by a buzzing cloud of angry, aggressive black-and-yellows, presumably enraged after their home was towed to this place. Getting these photos was a challenge. Meanwhile, people pulling parts from nearby vehicles kept getting stung and/or chased away from their tools.
But I persevered, because my grandfather rallied and ice-raced a Saab 96 in Minnesota, and I remember this very loud and very rusty car from my childhood.
Saab was indeed born from jets, although some of the early models weren’t quite as slick-looking as, say, the Gripen. For example, the J29 “Flying Barrel” of 1948.
The Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget (Swedish Airplane Corporation) began selling cars when the first Saab 92 rolled off the assembly line in 1949. I’ve found a 92 in a junkyard, but that was in northern Sweden.
The 92 was available in the United States, though it found few takers. After that, we got the 93 (best-known in the United States for being sold by the Massachusetts Saab dealership owned by novelist Kurt Vonnegut). The 96, which first appeared here as a 1961 model, was the first Saab to sell in real quantity in the United States; its station-wagon cousin, the 95, also found sales success here.
Production of the 96 continued all the way through 1980, though the final model year for the 96 and 95 in the United States was 1973. I’ve documented a half-dozen or so examples of these cars in the boneyards over the years.
The early Saab 96 was powered by a straight-three two-stroke engine, but this car has the 1.5-liter Ford V-4 that was developed originally for the Taunus and first went into the 96 and 95 for the 1967 model year.
The U.S.-market version of this engine made 73 horsepower and 87 pound-feet of torque for 1968. The two-stroker was still available here that year, but went away for 1969.
The transmission is a four-speed column-shift manual. A Saxomat automatic clutch was available as an option, but I’ve never seen one on a Saab.
This car has a Colorado smog sticker from 1995, so we know that it was running three decades ago.
Is this 2006 Harbor Freight flyer, found inside, a clue that this Saab was on the road a decade later?
Old Saabs can go for real money now, and a V-4-equipped 96 in good shape can be worth five figures. This one has some rust and a ratty interior, so it didn’t get diverted to a forever home on the way to U-Pull-&-Pay.
Just the thing for narrow cobblestone alleys in Scandinavia.
Well I think the only solution is to set that waspy car on fire. I hate those things!
Before 4-wheel-drive SUVs became available, SAABs ruled in Colorado and New England winters.