Saab 9-3 Aero, Convertible, Turbo, Navigation, One Owner, Low Miles, We Finance on 2040-cars

Auto blog

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.

What car brand should come back?

Congratulations, wishful thinker! You've been granted one wish by the automotive genie or wizard or leprechaun or whoever has been gifted with that magical ability. You get to pick one expired, retired or fired automotive brand and resurrect it from its heavenly peace! But which one? That's a tough decision and not one to be made lightly. As we know from car history, the landscape is littered with failed brands that just didn't have what it took to cut it in the dog-eat-dog world of vehicle design, engineering and marketing. So many to choose from! Because I am not a car historian, I'll leave it to a real expert to present a complete list of history's automotive misses from which you can choose, if you're a stickler about that sort of thing. And since I'm most familiar with post-World War II cars and brands, that's what I'm going to stick to (although Maxwell, Cord and some others could make strong arguments). So, with the parameters established, let's get started, shall we? Hudson: I admit, I really don't know a lot about Hudson, except that stock car drivers apparently did pretty well with them back in the day, and Paul Newman played one in the first Cars movie. But really, isn't that enough to warrant consideration? Frankly, I think the Paul Newman connection is reason enough. What other actor who drove race cars was cooler? James Dean? Steve McQueen? James Garner? Paul Walker? But, I digress. That's a story for another day. Plymouth: As the scion of a Dodge family (my grandfather had a Dodge truck, and my mom had not one, but two Dodge Darts – the rear-wheel-drive ones with slant sixes in them, not the other one they don't make any more), I tend to think of Plymouth as the "poor man's Dodge." But then you have to consider the many Hemi-powered muscle cars sold under the Plymouth brand, such as the Road Runner, the GTX, the Barracuda, and so on. Was there a more affordable muscle car than Plymouth? When you place it in the context of "affordable muscle," Plymouth makes a pretty strong argument for reanimation. Oldsmobile: When I was a teenager, all the cool kids had Oldsmobile Cutlasses, the downsized ones that came out in 1978. At one point, the Olds Cutlass was the hottest selling car in the land, if you can believe that. Then everybody started buying Honda Civics and Accords and Toyota Corollas and Camrys, and you know the rest. But going back farther, there's the 442 – perhaps Olds' finest hour when it came to muscle cars.

Vampire Weekend singer responds to burning Saab controversy [w/video]

Last week, we tipped you off about Vampire Weekend and their new music video for the song Diane Young, a short film that consists entirely of setting fire to two perfectly nice-looking Saab 900 automobiles. The indie rock band's video - viewable by scrolling down - predictably triggered the internet ire of classic car enthusiasts - Saabophiles in particular - and word of the unrest eventually got back to the band itself.
According to music site Spinner (nb: owned by Autoblog parent AOL), the group was "stunned" at the backlash - enough that lead singer Ezra Koenig felt compelled to respond himself. According to Koenig, the band was under the impression that their record company was "looking to purchase the cheapest, oldest cars possible; they weren't trying to buy a beautiful perfect condition car." By way of apology, Koenig even goes so far as to note that bandmate Rostam Batmanglij is a keen fan of Saab.
Other reports have claimed that the cars may have been purchased under false pretenses, sold by owners who "wanted to see them go to a nice new home," but Koenig takes issue with that characterization, countering that he understood that the cars had substantial electrical problems.