I was really pleased to see this Saab ad come up on my Flickr feed today. I’d meant to cover it some time ago but didn’t get around to it.

It’s a Saab special edition that was put together by a dealership in England. Apparently individual dealers used to do this sort of thing from time to time, which must have made for a vast number of special editions over the years.

This one is the Saab 900 Wimbledon Edition. Unfortunately our host at Flickr hasn’t put up an enlarged version, so you’re going to have to press your nose to the screen and squint to read the test (it is legible).

This special edition in red from Wimbledon Saab and called the Sprint got lower, stiffer springs, an intercooler installed, leather steering wheel and a color coded body kit as well - all before Saab released their own Aero versions with a body kit.

With so many special editions out there, you’re probably wondering why I’d want to post about this one in particular. There’s two notable things here:

1 - The red car you see in the ad above has a body kit designed by a young freelance designer named Lance Cole, who later went on to write the essential Saab 99 and 900: The Complete Story. Lance designed the kit on behalf of a company called Profile, who supplied the kits to Wimbledon Saab. It’s notable that in these early days of bolt-on styling these weren’t actually bolted on. They used resin to attach the panels, so repairs would have been interesting.

2 - The dealership where these cars originated from seem to be my kind of dealer. The Saab 900 Special Editions pages have a page on Wimbledon Saab, and their advertising calls them the “Enthusiast Saab Dealer”. It seems that special editions were the rule rather than the exception there and there’s some great print ads at the link that’ll give you a feel for that.

I wonder if there’s still any of these particular special editions running around?

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If you’ve never visited Paul’s Classic 900 Special Edition’s website, do yourself a favour and hit that link. It’s a treasure.