2004 Saab 9-3 Linear on 2040-cars

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Saab's latest Chinese owners facing their own credit woes

Poor Saab, it can't seem to get a break. General Motors couldn't seem to make a go of it, neither could Spyker, and now it seems that its latest owner is encountering some problems of its own.
That owner, of course, is National Electric Vehicle Sweden, a Swedish holding company owned by Chinese investors. NEVS recently restarted production at the Saab plant in Trollhättan, Sweden, and had some ambitious plans for the brand's revival, but it appears to have run out of cash.
This according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, which discovered that NEVS is having trouble paying its suppliers. One such supplier, called Labo Test, has reportedly been owed some $22,000 by NEVS since February, and without payment, petitioned the Swedish government to place NEVS into bankruptcy proceedings. If that seems a little extreme to you over twenty-two grand, it would seem the parties agree, as the petition has reportedly since been withdrawn.

Junkyard Gem: 1983 Saab 900 Turbo 4-Door Hatchback

I've been finding quite a few interesting Saabs in Colorado car graveyards lately, including a 96 and a 99 (sadly, a discarded example of a Saab 92 has eluded me — at least in the United States — so far), and now it's the turn of the factory-hot-rod Saab that gave car shoppers more horsepower per dollar than anything they could buy from Germany at the time: the 900 Turbo. I found this car a few weeks back in a yard just south of Denver. Saab sold the original version of the 900 in the United States for the 1979 through 1993 model years (after that, the 900 name went on a car based on the Opel Vectra and closely related to the Saturn L-Series), and the early 900s looked very much like their 99 ancestors. Saab was an early adopter of turbocharging, and so the 900 Turbo was available here for the entire 1979-1993 sales run. This engine, a 2-liter slant-four derived from a 1960s Triumph design (and first cousin to the engine used in the Triumph TR7), was rated at 135 horsepower in 1983. That was big power for a small car in the Late Malaise Era, and it gave the 1983 Saab 900 Turbo a power-to-weight ratio similar to what you got in the Mitsubishi Starion and Porsche 944 that year. Electronic fuel injection finally made turbocharging work well for everyday driving (though the Maserati Biturbo stuck with blow-throw Weber carburetors all the way through 1986 in the United States), and it wasn't long before TURBO became a magical word. Yes, by 1984 you had Ozone and Turbo break-dancing while Ice-T makes his film debut. A few years earlier, with the (carbureted) Turbo Trans Am's not-so-stellar reliability on display, Boogaloo Shrimp's character would have been assigned a different name. Though it's possible, based on the fact that at least one 1980s boombox was built from a Saab 900 dash, that Turbo's name was inspired by Saab. Saab should get credit for doing so much to push turbocharging into the daily-driver mainstream. You could get a three-speed Borg-Warner automatic transmission in your new 1983 Saab 900, but it added 370 bucks (about $1,075 in 2022 dollars) to the cost of the car and made it much less fun to drive. This one has the 5-speed manual; I assume the E next to fifth gear stands for "efficiency." The five-door 900 Turbo listed at $16,910 with five-speed manual, which comes to about $49,055 today. A new BMW 528e cost $23,985 that year ($69,580 now) and offered just 121 horsepower.

NEVS to build new Saab models in China's Qingdao

National Electric Vehicle Sweden has officially signed a deal with Qingdao Qingbo Investment Company that will see the NEVS build EVs in Qingdao, China. The move is the first step on the road toward eventually selling vehicles in China. Reuters reports that the Chinese company has agreed to invest $307.33 million, after which point Qingdao Qingbo will receive 22 percent of the NEVS shares. Currently, there's no word on exactly when the funds and shares will change hands, but the Swedish automaker has previously said it fully intends to launch its first EV by early 2014.
NEVS has also made waves about potentially building a version of the old Saab 9-3 with a traditional internal combustion driveline. Currently, the manufacturer says it plans to ship the vehicles it builds in Sweden to the Qingdao port and distribute them to the rest of China from there. Later down the line, a manufacturing facility in Qingdao will supply the country with Chinese-built Saab models.