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NEVS Saab EV prototype on display, with top speed of just 75 mph

National Electric Vehicle Sweden, the Saab-owning Swedish holding company that is in turn owned by Chinese investors, has some problems (i.e., no cash). But that isn't stopping NEVS from showing off a prototype Saab 9-3 Electric Vehicle this week. But wait, you might be saying, didn't NEVS already start production of a 9-3 EV? Yes, indeed, and the vehicle displayed this week was indeed built at the Saab plant in Trollhattan in May as one of those early pilot builds. A modified Saab 9-3 Aero Sedan, the EV has had the lithium-ion battery pack jammed under the floor, so all of the cargo and passenger space of the gas-powered 9-3 remains available. "The starting point for our development of the Electric Vehicle project was to maintain all the good attributes and characteristics," said NEVS' vice president of engineering and product development, Stig Nodin in a statement. You can find the press release below. The li-ion pack comes from Beijing National Battery Technology (which is owned by the same company that owns NEVS) and can offer a range of about 120 miles, NEVS says. The prototype also has a 100-kW electric motor that offers 140 horsepower that provides a 0-60 miles per hour time of 10 seconds and a top speed of just 75 miles per hour. That's unlikely to be fast enough to outrun Saab's creditors, but NEVS says that the prototype is here "to serve as a reference for specification of coming production model(s)," so let's hope the speed number can be increased while the range at least stays the same. Today Nevs presented the Saab 9-3 Electric Vehicle as designed and produced as part of a prototype series in Trollhattan. The car is a modified Saab 9-3 Aero Sedan where the batteries are placed under the floor, keeping the full interior space as well as the luggage compartment intact. With that, the Saab 9-3 EV is just as practical as the Saab 9-3 Aero with gasoline engine. The Saab 9-3's famous driving-experience is of course preserved in the EV, helped by its low center of gravity and a 50/50 weight distribution. "We are happy to present the result of Nevs engineering into a real Saab EV product. The Saab cars' well-known performance and safety is maintained and we foresee a very good product for the market. When we developed the Saab 9-3 Aero Sedan Model Year 14, we focused on enhancing the driving experience, safety and quality.

Junkyard Gem: 1971 Saab 96

Americans could buy the very first mass-produced Saab car, the 92, all the way back in 1950. Few did, because a tiny and odd-looking Swedish car with a smoky two-stroke engine buzzing out 25 horsepower didn't seem suitable for highway use, especially when a new Plymouth business coupe sold for $1,371 (about $15,180 today). Then came the 93, notable to Americans mostly for being sold by novelist Kurt Vonnegut's Saab dealership in Massachusetts. The first Saab to win over respectable numbers of American car shoppers was the 96, introduced here for the 1961 model year. North American 96 sales continued through 1973, and I've managed to find one of the later 96s in a junkyard located near Pikes Peak in Colorado. North American sales of the much less oddball 99 began in the 1969 model year, and that car evolved directly into the original 900 that sold very well through the early 1990s. Still, some Americans living in icy regions stayed loyal to the 96, so Saab kept selling 96s here until federal emissions and safety regulations made such sales unprofitable. Meanwhile, Scandinavians could buy new 96s all the way through 1980. My grandfather, a self-taught engineer who set foot outside the city limits of St. Paul, Minn., only to race Corvettes at Elkhart Lake (in summer) and all manner of rust-prone imports on frozen lakes (in winter), had this Saab 96 when I was a kid. The somewhat uneven bodywork near street level is the result of house-paint-over-Bondo corrosion repairs, and I recall going on some terrifying high-speed rides around town with Grandpa, circa 1975, watching the pavement flash by through the holes in the floor as we headed to the VFW for the meat raffle. Hey, the St. Paul VFW had Grain Belt on tap for cheap, a consolation for those who failed to win any meat. After that, a man could take his Saab to an establishment selling authentic St. Paul booya. As I recall, this Saab finally broke in half at an ice race in the late 1970s and got replaced by a slightly less rusty Rabbit. The serious Saab 96 nuts— including my grandfather— preferred the two-stroke three-cylinder engine, due to its chainsaw racket and allegedly superior performance on ice. By 1969, however, a Ford-produced V4 became the only powerplant available in a new 96 on our shores (the V4 had been an option for a couple of years prior to that). Someone grabbed the 65-horsepower V4 before I reached this car.

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.