Saab Is Back, But Nothing Like The Good Old Days

The news earlier this week that Saab has restarted production has been blown way out of proportion. Across the interweb phoenixes were rising from ashes and fanfares were sounding to the tune of a slightly mental but ultimately lovable Swedish ex-brand of car.

What really happened up at the Trollhättan factory was that two 9-3s rolled off the production line as guinea pigs for a planned re-jig of the plant to create a new line of Chinese-funded electric cars. Hardly a full-scale assault on BMW and Audi.

A series of petrol-engined 9-3s will be built like this to iron out the problems in re-aligning the process, and given that the, err, ‘eccentricities’ of the disused production line will probably result in a few cock-ups in the finished cars, it’s no surprise to learn that the entire run of them have already been sold to three Chinese government departments.

The 9-3s aren’t actually allowed to use the Saab badge, though. Only the name can be carried over, and only for this limited run of China-bound 9-3s. With Chinese money behind a new venture called National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), the platform will eventually be used as the basis for a NEVS-branded all-electric car.

But enough of the tedium. Saab used to make some excellent cars, even if they did sometimes seem to be styled for geography teachers. This re-lighting of the Saab flame (sort of) has made us just a little bit nostalgic for the days of cars like this. Check out the 9-3 Viggen, sitting in front of its fighter plane namesake.

The turbocharged 9-3 Viggen was a bit of a monster, with later versions pushing out a claimed 230bhp through their front wheels. The rumour mill reckoned that most of the 500 UK-bound examples were making quite a lot more than that, which would explain the hilariously rampant torque-steer and crushing (if wonky) acceleration.

Much further back on the timeline we get to the 99 Turbo, another forced-induction winner from the Swedish oddballs. Whack a couple of driving lamps on the front and you had a thoroughly brilliant fast road weapon that felt like a proper sports car.

Something tells us that the NEVS Saabs-that-aren’t-Saabs won’t be quite so exciting. Only time will tell, but tonight we’re once again feeling a pang of sadness as we remember the occasional brilliance of the other Swedish car maker.