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GM wins appeal, dismissal of $3B Saab-related Spyker suit

It's been a long time since we last heard of the legal battles between Spyker CEO Victor Muller and General Motors, the automaker from which Muller's company purchased the embattled Saab brand back in 2010. To refresh your memories, after struggling through 2011 and entering into bankruptcy, Spyker attempted to save the Saab brand by selling it to a Chinese consortium. General Motors, though, blocked the sale because it did not want any of its intellectual property, of which Saab was in possession of from its days under the GM umbrella, in the hands of a potential rival automaker. Spyker then sued GM for intentionally blocking what it said was Saab's only chance of survival. The $3-billion suit was dismissed after a judge ruled in favor of GM, which apparently had granted a license to Saab to continue building cars using its technologies, but reserved the right to cancel that agreement if Saab again changed hands. Spyker appealed, and, according to Reuters, the appeals court upheld the previous ruling, again siding with GM. National Electric Vehicle Sweden, the company that eventually purchased Saab out of bankruptcy, managed to restart production for a short period before itself falling into financial trouble. We have at least another month to wait before hearing how Saab's next chapter may read.

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.

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