Following are photos and comments by 1985 Gripen, who attended the Saab USA 60th Anniversary press event, which included not only a drive in the new 60th Anniversary Edition Saabs, but a drive of some pristine old school Saabs from GM’s own Heritage Collection.

Time for my favourite – the 99 Turbo!

Click photos to enlarge.

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The 99 Turbo. Scope those Inca wheels!!! The only thing this baby was missing was the optional louvers on the rear window! Aside from the 93′s mudflap, this was the only car I could find a blemish on. There was a tear on one of the seats. I would imagine it’s really difficult to find a color match for that upholstery for a repair job (and those seats are notorious for tearing – both mine had tears, one looked like a cat had shredded it – SW).

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Following are photos and comments by 1985 Gripen, who attended the Saab USA 60th Anniversary press event, which included not only a drive in the new 60th Anniversary Edition Saabs, but a drive of some pristine old school Saabs from GM’s own Heritage Collection.

Click photos to enlarge.

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The 1960 RAC rally winning 96. Doesn’t the front end look like a little face? No, I wasn’t drinking this day. I swear it!

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Following are photos and comments by 1985 Gripen, who attended the Saab USA 60th Anniversary press event, which included not only a drive in the new 60th Anniversary Edition Saabs, but a drive of some pristine old school Saabs from GM’s own Heritage Collection.

Click photos to enlarge.

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Jan-Willem Vester’s “quintessential SAAB”, the 1970 SAAB 99. This car is riding on Dutch tires. Jan-Willem, who is Dutch, explained that the company that makes the tires specializes in tires for classic cars.

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Following are photos and comments by 1985 Gripen, who attended the Saab USA 60th Anniversary press event, which included not only a drive in the new 60th Anniversary Edition Saabs, but a drive of some pristine old school Saabs from GM’s own Heritage Collection.

Click photos to enlarge.

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John Libbos instructing a guest on the finer points of driving the Sonett. The car seems to be grinning at me. Reminds me of that old “Speed Buggy” cartoon by Hanna-Barbera.

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Following are photos and comments by 1985 Gripen, who attended the Saab USA 60th Anniversary press event, which included not only a drive in the new 60th Anniversary Edition Saabs, but a drive of some pristine old school Saabs from GM’s own Heritage Collection.

Click photos to enlarge.

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The 93F 750 GranTourismo.

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Following are photos and comments by 1985 Gripen, who attended the Saab USA 60th Anniversary press event, which included not only a drive in the new 60th Anniversary Edition Saabs, but a drive of some pristine old school Saabs from GM’s own Heritage Collection.

Click photos to enlarge.

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Front view of the 92. The windshield wipers were remarkably thin.

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The 92. What I like about these pictures is that there are people in-frame to give some perspective as to the scale of these cars. In professional photo shoots it’s difficult to judge just how small these cars really are.

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The very streamlined rear end of the SAAB 92. There was no trunk on this initial model. It came later on the 92B.

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Jan-Willem Vester getting into the 92. Love those “suicide doors”! An interesting note is that the door has a strap on the inside to keep it from opening too far. This strap is brown leather. How quaint! I noticed more than one of the SAAB employees sporting Salomon brand clothing. Mr. Vester is wearing a Salomon shirt and shoes here and I saw another employee (it might have been Jorgen Nylen) wearing a Salomon jacket. You might be aware that SAAB has a marketing deal with Salomon outside the U.S. http://www.saabsalomon.com

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The very simple, clean interior of the SAAB 92. Note the spare spark plugs in the box in the glove compartment.

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This car is 57-years-old and looks like it just rolled off the assembly line. In the bottom of the picture you can see the brown leather strap that keeps the suicide door from opening too far.

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Saab USA hosted a 60th Anniversary drive for the press last week in San Diego. Trollhattan Saab was there. I asked regular reader and commenter Mike M (aka 1985 Gripen) to head on down and enjoy the driving and the people.

Part 1 of this diary is Arriving in San Diego

Part 2 of the diary is The Dinner

This is part 3, and once again it’s a long one, but chock full of facts and insights that you just can’t get anywhere else but in the company that Mike enjoyed during the event.

There’s news on Saab’s E100 car showing at Geneva next month. Erik Carlsson’s thoughts on XWD. Saab staffers give their views on everything from Black Turbo (yes!) to Xenon headlamps.

Enjoy!

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Just the Facts

These facts are in no particular order. All these facts were relayed to me either by employees of SAAB USA or SAAB Sweden. I won’t tell who told me what information in case anything was not supposed to be released yet. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble for sharing information with me.

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Things learned from Jay Spenchian, President of SAAB USA’s presentation over breakfast:

General Motors has a lot of faith in the SAAB brand and has chosen to showcase SAAB at the Geneva Auto Show, despite there being new offerings from GM’s other European brands such as Opel.

It has been recognized internally that SAAB has lost some of its uniqueness in recent years and they intend to rectify this. If you don’t like the unique “SAAB” way to do things you can buy a BMW, which he also mentioned at the Saab Owners Conference last year.
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