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My upcoming project – restoring a Saab 99 Turbo – will begin in earnest later this week when I finally pick up the car and bring it home.
Naturally, I’ve got Saab 99 fever right now. Saab 99 Turbo fever, to be precise, but I’m happy to broaden my disease and include the entire 99 family.
What follows are a few entries I did back on Trollhattan Saab back in 2007. In March of that year, we had a month of Saab 99 loving, with lots of 99 stories and photos of owners’ cars. I kicked the month off with a few entries giving some background info on the Saab 99 in general.
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The Saab 99 – a primer
Ever heard about the Saab – Daihatsu connection?
That’s one of the ways that Saab disguised prototypes of the Saab 99 during its testing phase – they crafted a “daihatsu” badge from a Saab Sport badge out of the Saab 96. The Saab 99 needed some disguising as it was the first all-new Saab in a long time and by the time it arrived it was the first new Saab model in around 19 years!
The Saab 99 was born from a project called Gudmund, named for the day on which the board took the decision to pursue the project – April 2, 1964 – Gudmund’s Day.
With the growth of the company and the growth of the motor vehicle market after the second world war, Saab knew that it needed a larger car to keep pace. The Saab 99 was to be this car. It’s initial design work was done primarily by Saab design guru Sixten Sason with the help of a young Bjorn Envall. Sadly, Sason died a short time before the unveiling of the 99. His work on the 99, though, and it’s use right through to the last Saab 900 in 1993 meant the Sason’s designs had driven Saab for 46 years from its inception as a car company in 1947. The fact that a late model Saab 900 can still look like a very contemporary car even today is a true testament to his creative skills.
Work got underway in earnest and the first prototype vehicles began testing in 1965. No-one would recognise them as 99s though as they resembled 96s in just about every way. These vehicles were known as “toads”. In effect they were a Saab 99 chassis and engine with a widened Saab 96 body placed on them. A 20cm section was welded into place down the middle, thus widening the 96 body to fit onto the 99 chassis. The Swedish newspaper Expressen managed to uncover the truth when a photographer managed to catch a ‘toad’ and a regular 96 together.
The Saab 99 made its public debut at a show called Teknorama in Stockholm, on November 22nd, 1967. It would be another year, however, before the model was released to the public for sale. Even the journalists had to wait, as there were only 50 cars available and these were being rigorously tested by a crew of engineers and carefully selected test drivers.

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Various pictures of Saab 99s – though mostly Turbos
Most were harvested from the month of Saab 99 loving we had back at Trollhattan Saab in March 2007.

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The Saab 99 was sold between MY1969 and MY1984, after which a variant called the Saab 90 was produced until MY1987.
Production figures for each calendar year were as follows:

• 1967 – 25
• 1968 – 4,190
• 1969 – 19,411
• 1970 – 29,755
• 1971 – 35,136
• 1972 – 45,001
• 1973 – 52,065
• 1974 – 62,637
• 1975 – 64,167
• 1976 – 72,819
• 1977 – 60,316
• 1978 – 45,851
• 1979 – 22,443
• 1980 – 17,108
• 1981 – 13,381
• 1982 – 20,006
• 1983 – 17,187
• 1984 – 7,145

Total production – 588,643
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The Saab 99 was produced at the following plants in the following numbers:
Trollhattan (Swe)
2 door – 205,456
3 door – 60,863
4 door – 71,892
5 door – 8,901
Total – 347,112