"Did you drive a Saab in the early 1980s and imagine you were travelling around in your own little piece of Swedish mechanosphere? If so, here’s some news, the chances are you were equally likely to be enjoying a "
Saab 900 Turbo Cabrio
Finnish-Swedish collab from Saab
In our feature article ‘The Quiet Collaborator’ (Influx April Edition) we refer to the Saab 90 as a classic of the Oeuvre, and so it was.
But when you close your eyes and picture the perfect Saab, the Classic Saab, we’d bet an IKEA meatball dinner that you’d be conjuring an image of the 900 Cabriolet.
That strained Swedish allusion is however mute, as apart from being commissioned there, this Saab had little to do with the company’s home turf.
When the brief went out in the early 1980s for a 900 convertible a number of firms built prototypes, including Saab HQ, who used the three door hatch as their base model.
In the end though it was our Finnish friends at Valmet Automotive who won the contract, basing their design around the 900 two door. So this piece of car history went into production in Finland in 1986 and although it was started as a limited run the Finnish factory produced over 198,000 of them in total.
If you’re struggling to believe that this classic piece of Swedish iconography was designed, built and manufactured exclusively in a small town in Finland then here are some rare shots (courtesy of Valmet Automotive) of the prototype on the Finnish production line.
The Quiet Collaborator rides again!
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