Saab named its first car after the aircraft that came before it
Saab's first car was called the 92 because the company's previous product, the Saab 91, was a single-engine training aircraft. Founded in 1937 to build warplanes for neutral Sweden, the firm turned to cars as the war ended and fighter demand looked set to fade, starting a design project in 1945.
Four prototypes called Ursaab, meaning original Saab, preceded the production 92, which entered production in December 1949 at a converted site in Trollhättan. Its descendants kept a two-stroke, three-cylinder engine that needed oil added to the petrol, along with front-wheel drive and a freewheel that let drivers shift down without the clutch. The 96 of 1960, the first Saab exported in large numbers, sold nearly 550,000.
The 1968 Saab 99, the first all-new model in 19 years, brought features that came to define the brand: a curved wraparound windscreen, bumpers that recovered from knocks, washers for the headlamps and reinforcing beams in the doors, plus the hockey stick styling line drawn by Sixten Sason. The millionth Saab car rolled out in 1976. The 900 that followed in 1978 reached nearly a million units and became the best-selling Saab, and the classic version still draws a cult following.
In 1989 the car business became Saab Automobile AB, half owned by General Motors, which bought the rest in 2000 for US$125 million. An experimental Malmö factory built around worker comfort opened in 1989 but closed in June 1991 after about 20,664 cars. Badge-engineered GM-era models such as the Subaru-based 9-2X flopped, and new projects stalled while production was slated to shift toward Opel's plant at Rüsselsheim.
GM put the brand under review in December 2008. A Koenigsegg bid collapsed in November 2009, and Spyker bought Saab in 2010, but after a year fighting insolvency the company filed for bankruptcy in 2011 when GM blocked a Chinese takeover over technology transfer. National Electric Vehicle Sweden bought the estate in June 2012 and restarted 9-3 production in December 2013, only to lose the right to the Saab name in 2014.
Source: Saab Automobile
