2007 Saab 9-3 2.0t 60th Anniv. Sportsedan 210hp Auto Cleancarfax New Tires/insp on 2040-cars

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Saab plant reopens, production to resume by year's end?

Saab is gearing up to start production of the 9-3 again in September, two years after the last exampled rolled off the assembly line at the company's Trollhättan factory, Aftonbladet reports. Saab's new owner, National Electric Vehicle Sweden AB (NEVS), a Chinese-Japanese consortium created solely to buy Saab, says that the model's parts supply is the bottleneck in the production process, understandable since many of Saab's suppliers closed after it stopped production two years ago. The automaker also needs to establish a new dealership network. It is not entirely clear where Saab will market their new models, but North America is not expected to figure into their plans, at least initially.
Almost 400 factory employees are reportedly back working at Trollhättan, and Saab is looking to recruit 180 workers to help with production, presuming the factory can overcome its supply issues and go back online in the fall.
The new 9-3 is understood to be something short of an all-new car, a revision of the old 9-3 that started production in 2002. It will reportedly be offered initially as a four-door sedan and two-door convertible, and it will have a turbocharged engine, according to NEVS, which we expect will be a four cylinder. An electric 9-3 could come as early as next year. Turbocharged engines are part of Saab's DNA, NEVS Vice President Mattias Bergman has stated, and future Saab models will have them - despite the automaker's planned progression toward electric vehicles. The 9-3 will get small facelifts over time, says Mikael Östlund, a press officer at NEVS.

Super sleeper Saab 900 does 174 mph in the standing mile

Somewhere behind Hennessey setting a new top speed record at this year's Texas Mile with its camouflage Ford GT, a stock-looking 1996 Saab 900T pulled up to the line to see what it could do. The dealer showroom wheels wouldn't offer any indication that the 2.0-liter four-cylinder under the hood was getting help from a Garrett turbocharger, a tuned ECU and E85 gas to put out 465 horsepower at the front wheels.
Knowing that, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that at the other end of the mile the sky blue Swedish wonder was doing 174 miles per hour. The four-cylinder class at the Texas Mile has plenty such rockets, too, this Swede coming just behind a Dodge Neon that did 175.8 mph. You can watch the Saab do its thing in the video below.

Junkyard Gem: 1989 Saab 9000 Turbo

Saab got a lot of sales out of its 99 and 99-based 900 models, but a bigger and more modern car became necessary in order to compete with other European manufacturers in the executive-car market. This car was the 9000, and examples are getting very hard to find nowadays. Here's a 200,000-mile turbocharged 1989 Saab 9000 in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service wrecking yard. Other than Mercedes-Benzes and Volvo 240s, I don't see many junkyard 1980s European cars with better than 200,000 miles on the clock. The owner or owners of this Saab loved it enough to keep it in nice shape for a good 30 years, and it drove more than 7,000 miles on average during each year of its life. The engine is the same 160-horsepower turbocharged Saab H that went into the 1989 Saab 900 Turbo. This engine is descended from the Triumph Slant-4, which Americans knew best as the power under the hood of the Triumph TR-7. Members of this engine family remained in production from 1968 through 2009. It has the five-speed manual transmission, which was starting to become an unusual transmission choice for U.S. car buyers by 1989 — even in Saabs. The Scania badging on Saabs went away after 1995. I see plenty of Saab 900s during my junkyard wanderings, but 9000s aren't so easy to find in the big U-Wrench yards in 2018. I'm not sure what's going on with the fabric in this car's door-panel inserts. Saab went with the same ignition-switch location as everybody else with the 9000, rather than the "traditional" spot between the front seats. Naturally, Saab purists were so outraged by this that they ordered another round of surstromming and swore to stick with their two-stroke 96s for the next 30 years. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Ballet in 3 acts for 8 SAAB 9000 Turbos. Featured Gallery Junked 1989 Saab 9000 Turbo View 18 Photos Auto News Saab Automotive History