Trollhattan Saab has changed!
The site you're viewing now is the original Trollhattan Saab weblog, though it's now an archive only and no new material is posted here. As of February 2009, all new material is posted at our new site - Saabs United.
Please join us at Saabs United and get your daily Saab fix from Saab sources all around the world.
Moved back up to the top again as the Turbo-X stuff was mainly for the US, who are now heading off to bed….
I’m very pleased and priveleged to host this article, written for readers of TS by Lance Cole.
Lance is an automotive and aviation writer based in the UK and would be known by Saab enthusuasts in particular for his book, Saab 99 and 900: The Complete Story.
My enduring thanks to Lance. Enjoy.
This article has also been cross-posted at The Spirit of Saab
——
Old aeroplanes smell, every classic aviation enthusiast knows that. Sit in a Spitfire or a Messerchmitt 109 and the patina of leather, aluminium, bakelite plastic, oil, grease, and canvas, lends a tangible reek, an actual smell.
The same whiff pervades the interiors of Catalina flying boats, Lancasters, Douglas DC 3s and just about any old aeroplane. Even old, first generation jetliners have a smell – think Boeing 707 or Comet or Caravelle or VC10.
When it comes to cars however, the smell thing seems less defined.
Yes, classic 1930s race cars reek, so too do 1960s Alfas, Lancias and Morris Minors. But some cars have no smell at all – not even old ones; when did you last scratch and sniff a 1980s Honda or a plastic lined Ford hatchback – you didn’t because they don’t pong.
All of which begs the questions – why do old Saabs have that unique, special, Saab-only smell – and what is it? And is it something to do with aviation?
To answer the questions, I took my mind way back to days of yore, When Saabs were Saabs and Abba were gold.
My first car was bought in 1981 and was a 1968 early model steel bumpered, Saab 99 two door (well it would be for 1968). It had that lovely cockpit style fascia with a top roll coaming that arced back into the door side panels. The clock was off a 96 and there was chrome detailing on the seatbelt buckles and some very fungal vinyl in the cabin.
Above all, there was the smell: The car had this really strong pong – and it smelt just like my grandad’s Auster light aircraft – a sort of vintage eau d’ armpit mixed with stale canvas, cigar, oak, horsehair, alloy and an air of classic French polished woodwork.
The Saab smelled.
It was not an off putting odour, but it was a definite pong. My mate had a 96 V4 – a white one, and we both suddenly realised that both cars smelt the same.
We could not work it out so we just put up with it.
I sold the Saab for a fat profit and (somewhat idiotically) bought a Citroen GS. The Citroen was brilliantly designed, had a flat four engine, strong hull, and like all Robert Opren designs, caught the light beautifully. Needless to say it disintegrated in front of my eyes, but when it worked, it was truly a spaceship of a car.
Years later we had a dog poo brown 1976 Saab 99 and that also had a smell. And even more years after that I owned my classic 900 five door GLI in blue with blue trim. And you guessed it, that smelt too.
But along came a NG 9-3 and an early 9-5 – and the smell was gone.
I have always wanted to know why my Saabs smelt and what the smell was. On visits to Sweden, no one at Saab knew what the smell was, but they all knew that Saabs had a smell – “Oh yes, definitely Saabs smell,” they would say in lovely sing song Svenksa speak- but “No, we do not know what the smell is.”
Tak, mate!
So what was that smell?
The answer, I believe, partly lies in a mix of low tech glues that were used to stick trim in all cars and aircraft up until the late 1970s. From the 1920s to 1970s, seats and trim were put together in the same way- stuffed, padded, tied, strung, and stuck. And the interiors of cars and aircraft were made of alloy, tinplate and mild steel – even dashboards were metal – albeit covered in lovely rubbery vinyl (kinky stuff I know).
And then there were veneers of wood, of fake wood, and more spreads of the marmalade of glues that were car (and aircraft) interiors before slush moulded, toxic lumps of dashboards and trims, were bunged into post 1980 cars and began their leach of nasty chemcial compounds into your car and your body.
The glues used in old cars and old Saabs would have been animal based – and let us hope they were organically fed! – and interiors had bare metal, plastic vinyls, chrome, carpets and seats that may well have contained horsehair and fibre glass in a combined heady mix, topped off by the whiff of ancient Bakelite (younger readers will have to look Bakelite up…).
Even the last Saab to smell –the 900 Classic with its moulded trims, new dashboard and that headlining monster, combined some of the old world craft of interior trim artisanship.
Throw in the effects of damp and, the fact that even the late model 900 Classics had wooden panels in the back end of the cabin – plywood for something’s sake – and the smells created a list of ingredients just like a 1950s Saab! The plywood has got be the secret ingredient in the fragrance.
I reckon the mix of the above, all brought together as only the Swedes can, is the reason why Saabs smell.
Newer Saabs have none of this – it’s all moulded micro pores and polycarbonates – with no bare metal to stroke and nothing organic to smoke.. Which is why they do not smell like Saabs.
So there you have it, my theory on why old classic machines, and notably old classic Saabs, smell. It is a wonderful, nostalgic mix of animal, metal, mineral, all blended and smeared together to create an aura like no other.
All we need now is a Saab aftershave of the same smell – one that can be dripped from a dispenser into the air vents, and then we can all go back in time.
There is only one problem. Volvos from 1960 to 1970 and 1980, were built in the same country using the same techniques- but they did not smell!
Called to odure, as they say…
23 responses so far ↓
1 Mike C.
// Nov 28, 2007 at 3:59 am
Lance, love your work…
2 saabyurk (Ted Y)
// Nov 28, 2007 at 4:14 am
Now I know why my storage barn has such a warm, welcoming smell. It’s odeur de Saab with a touch of odeur de Studebaker.
Thanks Lance.
3 saabyurk (Ted Y)
// Nov 28, 2007 at 4:36 am
Sorry for the second post, but I forgot the most famous Saab odor of all, reserved only for special occasions, an odor no Volvo ever equaled: odeur de 2-cycle.
4 denvernewbie
// Nov 28, 2007 at 6:16 am
great read, Lance.
now THAT’S the kind of Saab history I care to read about!
Thank you!
5 martin
// Nov 28, 2007 at 7:04 am
Great reading, well written and really interesting to read. Never thought about the smell and since I never have been in a old airplane I can only imagine.
6 craig
// Nov 28, 2007 at 7:14 am
…interesting but i noticed that the current/new 9-3 smells a lot like a commodore. Could it be GM ?
7 Mag-X
// Nov 28, 2007 at 7:22 am
Of all the useless things scientis get paid to study, this one should be on the top of the list of things to figure out.
8 MJL
// Nov 28, 2007 at 10:46 am
Hey, that’s not true! While the distinctive velor smell of a classic 900 may be long gone, the 9-5 still smells! It’s the leather seats – smell like fish somehow.
9 eggsngrits
// Nov 28, 2007 at 11:25 am
Great stuff!! Thanks, Lance!!
My first C900 was a 900S, and thus had velour seats while the second one was an SPG (Carlsson to the Euros) and had the leather.
The 900S smelled plasticy. The SPG smelled like leather and gas.
10 1985 Gripen
// Nov 28, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Very witty and entertaining. This is something missing from many archives: the smell. You can keep data on all sorts of facts and details, but smell is not one of them. Smell is something that can only be stored in the human memory. However, memories can be recalled by smell probably more than any other sense.
Thanks to both Swade and Lance for this entertaining article.
11 MarkoA
// Nov 28, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Nice read. That was very entertaining.
My C900 smells always a bit of transmission oil. Actually I´m so used to it that everytime I notice that odor somewhere, our c900 comes into my my mind. And this odor is not really nice…
Back in ´70s when I was kid, I remember that most cars really made me sick because of the smell. Especially one Volvo 240 that my aunt´s husband was driving. I don´t know what that smell was, but I still get shivers when I think of it. It was like mixture of gas, exhaust, tobacco and dirt. Ick!
12 Drew B
// Nov 28, 2007 at 5:36 pm
One thing Lance omitted to mention were the heated seats.
I can vividly rember the first time I used them in my old 900, which had been formerly owned by a fat, Indian doctor. The smell of 15 years worth of curry-derived farts and stale BO would rise up from the seats and permeate through the cabin like a noxious gas every time they turned on. The mental images that I conjured up forced me to disconnect them, never to be used again.
Pewwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!
DB
13 riku1100s
// Nov 28, 2007 at 5:53 pm
”But along came a NG 9-3 and an early 9-5 – and the smell was gone.”
Did the cars have the ventilated seats option, by any chance ?
14 Nahtanoj
// Nov 28, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Plywood! If you look under the folding floor of the cargo area in a brand-new Saab 9-3 SC, you will see that it is made of plywood! High-tech it’s not, but it seems to work just fine . . . .
15 TimJ
// Nov 28, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Can we transport that gorgeous odor to other vehicles somehow, can we can it somehow? The smell is like those they’re spraying in to some new cars, except that lasts like a month.
My friend have a Saab 99, I thought he puts something to his car because of that nice smell. He denies. He just says “it’s the SAAB”.
This was a good article! But is there a way to save that lovely smell?
16 David N.
// Nov 29, 2007 at 2:31 am
Great read Lance!
My ‘74 MG-B has a heady odour as well. It stinks mostly of old leather, tatty carpet, and vinyl roof, mixed with equal parts 90W oil, overly rich exhust, and slightly rusty steel. Mmmm…
Certainly a lovely combination of aromas, despite a complete lack of plywood.
Vintage cars stink in a unique way that modern cars never will.
17 SaabKen
// Nov 29, 2007 at 3:32 am
I love my 9000CSE’s Bridge of Weir leather smell. Oh and sometimes just a faint whiff of gasoline enters the cabin (from some common glitch with the gas filler tube). That’s when the fun *really* begins
But I’ll pass on the sweet antifreeze smell of a leaky heater core !
Thanks Swade for the amusing discussion !
18 TimJ
// Nov 29, 2007 at 3:39 am
The smell I was talking about isn’t nowhere near any oil or gasoline or leather. It’s just a sweet odor.
19 Simon A
// Nov 29, 2007 at 7:01 am
My 9-5 smells like crayons!
20 Staffan V
// Nov 29, 2007 at 10:45 pm
I have both a 99 (1979) and a 900 (1988) and they smell differently. The 99 has a distinct 99 smell while the 900 have a less noticable smell.
21 saab900NG
// Mar 10, 2008 at 7:10 am
Hi all
when i first started driving in 1988 i had a 1984 saab 900 turbo, it was black, had the manhole cover wheels..and looking back i had people ask me what was that smell in my car, I got selfconcious thinking i may have stepped in something and it was embrassing. But people would say its not a gross smell but its some sort of werid smell..Lance is absolutly right because ive got a 1996 900 turbo SE (NG) and it has a smell of leather and what ever products im using to treat and care for the inside of the car..but it doesnt smell like my 84 did!
PS i bought lance’s book a few years back and its a very well done book. The only thing it doesnt cover is the viggen but i think thats because the book was wrtien around that time..im new to the site and id love to make some new freinds..
Damian
22 Frank
// Mar 27, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I have a 2000 Saab 9.3 and it too just started to wreak. Egg, fart, musty, stale. Is there a solution to the problem?
Stop eating eggs?
23 Daniel
// Oct 2, 2008 at 3:10 am
My 2000 9-5 aero smells just like (or at least very similar to) my old ‘90 900 s. I can remember my brother’s 86 900 spg used to smell the same way too. People tell me that my car smells like crayons, but all that I can smell is pure nostalgia. haha There’s just something about the smell that adds so much character to the car.