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Saab has been out of the automotive business for some years now, but one of their last cars has stuck around. Here’s a look at the Saab 9-3.
We Don’t Make Compromises. We Make Saabs.
Saab is a Swedish brand that originally started as a military aircraft contractor, but for some time they dabbled in civilian automobiles. Their four wheeled foray started with the Saab 92, a compact personal car that featured a relatively aerodynamic design for its time. Its name came about due to which project Saab was currently on. The model prior for instance, the Saab 91, was a training plane. Nearly all of Saab’s car lineup would feature the number nine in their name from that moment on (with the exception of models like the Sonnet or 600).
Today, we’re looking back on one of the final Saab cars to wear that griffin badge and carried on that naming tradition, the Saab 9-3. Saab might be out of the car game for good, but the 9-3 still holds some relevance today in its absence. It wasn’t the fastest car out there and it wasn’t the most popular, but there’s a devout following behind this Swedish branded mid-size car that sourced parts from GM. Let’s start from its humble beginnings with the true Saab it was derived from.
Saab 900
The Saab 900 debuted in 1978 and was one of the longest running nameplates from the Swedish car manufacturer. It was also one of the first divergent takes on their product naming, as it had moved away from the serialized naming convention in place of a unique moniker. Saab sold the mid-sized 900 in hatchback, sedan, and even convertible guises over its lifetime, but that was pretty par for the course when it came to the state of automobile lineups for that time. What made the Saab 900 unique though was its engineering.
The Saab slanted four-cylinder fitted in the 900 was set up with crankshaft pointed towards the front of the car and a transaxle was installed at the bottom of the engine, also acting as an oil pan, to send power to the front wheels. It was a funky setup that kept nearly all of the propulsion equipment in one package under the hood.
Then there’s the suspension of the 900 that featured a typical double wishbone independent front suspension, but the rear got a little weird. It was made up of a solid rear axle that had some unique linkage, with the lower control arm facing towards the front and the upper control arm facing the rear of the vehicle.
And finally, there was the quirky feature it carried over from its Saab 99 brother, the center placed key ignition. Nearly all Saab cars feature this odd placement for the ignition, right next to the shifter and emergency brake. Saab claimed this key placement was safer in the event of a crash, but it also was positioned in such a way that it could be easily nudged and turn the car off.
The Saab 900 also had some fun special editions that truly made the it one of the best cars to come out of Saab. The Saab 900 Turbo that introduced the turbocharged 99 Turbo engine into a larger, more comfortable ride. Following that came the Saab 900 SPG that enhanced the Turbo model by being tuned to produce more horsepower, stiffened the suspension, and added a special body kit. Then the Aussies even got their hands on it to create the 900 Enduro, a Turbo with widebody kit and a special sticker kit. Those are just some of the iterations the 900 presented that led to its cult classic status.
The General Motors Chapter
In 1989, the Saab automobile branch was spun off into an independent company that General Motors bought a 50% stake in. With some GM influence, the Saab 900 went through its first full redesign for 1994. The new generation Saab 900 was built on GM’s GM2900 platform that was shared with cars like the European Opel Vectra and American Saturn L-Series. While the exterior held some Saab aesthetics, it featured a lot more GM underpinnings and replaced the odd engine setup with a more basic configuration.
The four-cylinder engine was now the typical transverse engine orientation found in most front-wheel-drive cars today. Thankfully, a turbocharged engine option was still available and shoppers could even opt for a 2.5L V6. The transmission did see an interesting option come about for this model in the form of Sensonic. There was the traditional manual, an automatic, or the Sensonic semi-automatic transmission option for the new Saab 900. This new Sensonic transmission featured a manual gear shifter, but ditched the clutch pedal in favor of a computer aided clutch control system. It reacted a lot faster than the pedal engaged version and won some awards for the innovation. Pretty nifty.
GM wanted to make Saab considered more of a luxury brand. So, the company added high end features like the Saab Information Display, a special dimming gauge cluster called the Black Panel (later called the Night Panel), and kept those classy wiper headlights. However, the new Saab 900 didn’t endure as long of a stint as its predecessor, only lasting four years before GM decided that it was no longer what they wanted. Saab went to work on the next iteration for this mid-size staple in their lineup. In the end, the company claimed they made 1,100 changes to the Saab 900 in order to bring about its successor, the Saab 9-3.
Introducing the Saab 9-3
The Saab 9-3 still rode on the same GM2900 platform that the 900 utilized, but they’d made enough changes to consider it a new model in their eyes. On the outside, the 9-3 kept most, if not all, of the body panels, lighting, and even the headlight wipers found on the 900. The only real changes of note on the exterior are a revised set of bumpers, alternate fog lights, exhaust tips, and the grille experienced a little more thickness in design.
While you’d be hard-pressed to identify which is which based on appearance alone, underneath there were some noticeable changes. The structure of the 9-3 was stronger, side impact airbags were installed, larger brakes were installed, revisions had been made to the suspension, the gear ratios were changed, and the carry over engines had moderate adjustments made. The 9-3 also introduced the first diesel engine option ever found in a Saab.
Moving into the 21st century, Saab would update the ECU in the 9-3 and introduce newer iterations of their turbocharged engines. Oh! Plus, they gave Saab enthusiasts the performance edition 9-3 Viggen at this time. The Viggen name points to Saab’s roots in aviation development, named after the cool looking Saab 37 Viggen fighter jet. Saab worked with Tom Walkinshaw Racing to craft this performance version of the 9-3 that features a 2.3L four-cylinder with a Mitsubishi sourced turbo, larger intercooler, performance exhaust system, a lowered suspension with stiffer springs, and a five-speed manual transmission. Saab also introduced some technological advancements when it came to the 9-3 Viggen. The ECU was specially tuned to push the new package, the transmission had torque sensing technology, and introduced traction control to the model.
The 9-3 Viggen went on to add a larger rear spoiler, sporty bumpers and side skirts, plus some unique 17-inch wheels specific to the model. Also exclusive to the Viggen edition was the option of an eye-catching Lightning Blue paint job. Inside, Saab provided some sporty leather seating with added bolstering and provided a couple of different interior color ways to choose from.
Only 4,600 Saab 9-3 Viggen models were produced from 1999 to 2002. Of those, just 426 made their way to the United States. Those lucky individuals who purchased one of these limited edition, high-performance Saab 9-3 Viggen models in the US were offered some advanced driving lessons at Road Atlanta and could go to a meet-and-greet with US based Saab execs. Hopefully that came with a nice swag bag too.
The Next Gen & the End… Sorta
The next generation of the Saab 9-3 came as a 2003 model year vehicle on the GM Epsilon platform, the same platform shared with the Saturn Aura, Pontiac G6, and Chevrolet Malibu of the time. This new generation finally ended the hatchback body style for the model, but introduced a four-door wagon model dubbed the SportCombi alongside the standard sedan and drop top convertible options. The Saab based engines were replaced by GM sourced Ecotec four-cylinder units. Turbocharged was still on the menu, but the transmissions options were reduced to either a GM sourced manual or automatic option. The innovative Sensonic semi-automatic was gone for good.
The 9-3 still tried to provide some unique features in its engineering though. Passive rear-wheel steering helped the car in turns and Saab’s Active Head Restraints system that reduced the whiplash effects was retained from the previous model. Plus, this new platform not only allowed for front-wheel-drive, but could also provide a new drivetrain that Saab called XWD. XWD stood for Cross-Wheel Drive and was a specially developed all-wheel drive system that would calculate and adjust the distribution of torque to negate wheel spin. The XWD system was originally only available in the top-of-the-line Aero trim, the special edition Turbo X models, and the crossover SUV Saab 9-3X based off the wagon model of the 9-3.
The exterior of the second-generation Saab 9-3 was a sleeker and more modern approach in comparison to the previous models, but clearly had more GM influence aside from the retained grille pattern. Inside the Saab 9-3 was pretty lux in comparison to the vehicles it shared a platform with. Leather appointed seats, available fake wood trim, a uniquely design center control stack that was positioned towards the driver, and it continued the tradition of the center placed ignition.
This early 2000s Saab 9-3 underwent a couple of refreshes, experienced some limited editions like the Turbo X, and even unveiled an electric vehicle version in 2010 called the Saab 9-3 ePower. Unfortunately, Saab wasn’t experiencing the sales GM had hoped for, so the company sold it off to Spyker N.V. Then, in another turn of bad luck, Spyker N.V. went bankrupt and began to spiral, bringing the Saab automotive brand down with it. Spyker N.V. struck up a deal with the National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), which eventually marked the end of the Saab brand on cars… but not the 9-3.
Remember that brief mention of the electric powered 9-3? Well, NEVS took that concept and has been building and improving upon the Saab 9-3 platform as a modern electric vehicle. The NEVS 9-3EV looks nearly identical to the Saab 9-3, with the exception of different badges and no engine under the hood. These 2000s era designed cars featuring electric motors aren’t prepared to take on the likes of Tesla quite yet, but it’s nice to see that a little piece of Saab’s automotive history is still carrying on.
