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Twenty Years of Innovation
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With automotive manufacture in this country tied to giant industrial complexes, it has been a special pleasure to take
a long look at one of the world’s smallest and most unusual carbuilders. Saab cars have always been of unique specification
—and the story behind them one of absorbing, and sometimes amusing, interest. From the giant presses that were installed
upside down at the Saab factory during the early years to the enviable record the cars have run up in rallying since, the
Saab history is one of an individualist manufacturer going its own way and making it on its own terms. And producing some
mightily appealing cars along the way.
We take pleasure in selecting the unique story of Saab as another automosite QUARTERLY reprint. The history which
follows was originally published under the title “Saab: The Other Swede” in automosite QUARTERLY’s Volume Xill, Number
3. Its author is Stan Grayson, associate editor of automosite QUARTERLY, and an enthusiast of Saab cars since his
college and graduate school days in the mid-Sixties. His trip to Sweden for research in the company archives, interviews
with many of the people who have shaped the Saab automotive adventure from the beginning and photography of
historic Saabs from the factory museum as well as contemporary Saabs have combined to provide the most comprehensive,
intimately detailed and colorful look yet at this intriguing Swedish carmaker.
Why Saab? Should anyone ask, this history will answer.
L. Scott Bailey
Publisher and President
SAAB: The Other Swede
An Automobile Quarterly Marque History
© Copyright 1975 Automobile Quarterly, N.Y., N.Y.
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Were he a man given to recollection, Gunnar Ljungstrém could find a lot to think
about in his comfortable book-filled apartment overlooking the Géta canal. There
he can watch the big ships churn by a hundred yards from his windows, ships on
their way from the Trollhattan locks up-river and across Sweden. But
Ljungstré6m—now seventy—is not given to recollection. Instead, like so many
outstanding engineers and designers, his thoughts tend to the future, to challenges
ahead and not to the past, riddled as it must be both with mistakes and confounding
problems solved.
And yet it was Ljungstrém who in 1945 was transferred from his post as wing
designer with an eight-year-old airplane company and asked to create something
different, not an airplane but a wholly new automobile. It was to be not just another
car but a sort of Scandinavian Volkswagen, a vehicle that people would be able to
both afford to buy and to run. “‘I was involved from the beginning as a designer,”
the taciturn Ljungstrém will admit of his part at Saab. From that beginning stems
one of the most innovative chapters in postwar automotive history. For the car
which Ljungstrém and the talented men who worked with him devised has
—sometimes for better and sometimes for worse—always stood apart, a true indi-
vidual in a world of automotive sameness.
Saabs have always been paradoxical cars, modestly-powered sedans which have
repeatedly defeated far more exotic and expensive machinery in Europe's toughest
and most prestigious rallies. The dependable Saab 96 is arguably the finest cold
weather passenger car ever built, yet inclement weather, especially rain, was for
many years its bane. In its two-stroke versions, it was a car of astonishing simplic-
ity, yet diagnosing faults or keeping that simple engine together for high mileages
often perplexed mechanics, at least in the U.S. It is a car built by one of the world’s
smallest automakers yet the firm stands in the forefront of automotive safety and
emissions technology.
Although Saab cars now date back exactly twenty-five years, there was no plan
to build automobiles when the company was founded beneath Europe’s gathering
war clouds in 1936 . ‘‘When Adolf Hitler was at his most dramatic in the Thirties,””
Gunnar Ljungstrém recalls, ‘the managed to affect a large part of the world. In
Sweden the result was a decision to increase rather than reduce our defense forces.
Saab was begun—with a state guarantee— as a company to build airplanes.””
In addition to the government's backing, substantial private capital was also
needed. This was provided chiefly by two sources: the enormously wealthy
Swedish financier Marcus Wallenberg and Axel Wennergren, a Swedish refrigera-
tion pioneer. The company they helped establish—called Svenska Aeroplan Ak-
tiebolaget (Saab)—was incorporated in April 1937 and a factory was constructed in
Trollhattan (literally translated: Troll Hill) on Sweden’s west coast. From the
beginning Saab had business associations with several United States companies, for
not only was the new firm licensed to build the North American NA1-16-4 trainer
and Northrop Douglas 8A1-1 dive bomber (as well as Germany’s Junkers 86K
bomber), but some forty engineers from Boeing and other U.S. firms went to
Sweden to help set things up. Gunnar Ljungstrém was by then hard at work at Saab,
his primary task being wing structure design. He had joined the company after a
four-year stint in England where beginning in 1932, he had worked for both
Standard Triumph and Rover, helping to develop an automatic transmission de-
signed by his multi-talented father, an engineer of great breadth and distinction.
By 1939 Saab began expanding and took over the aircraft-building facilities of
AB Svenska Jiirnvaigsverkstidera (ASJ)—primarily a railway car builder—in Link-
Sixten Sason's design rendering for a Saab car appears above. Right: the first Saab, the aerodynamic prototype now in Saab's Trollhattan museum.
Oping some 180 miles south of Stockholm. While ASJ’s subsidiary had been geared
for the production of light aircraft, Saab now began expanding the company’s
production facilities for something new, not construction of another licensed air-
craft but of a Saab-designed two-seat dive bomber and reconnaissance plane. The
Saab 17 first flew in 1940 and more than 300 were in use when production ended in
1944 and the firm's second plane—a twin-engine bomber designated the Saab
18—went into service. But although Saab would produce a variety of unique and
successful aircraft (including the only pusher propeller, ejection-seat-equipped
fighter produced in quantity during World War Il —the Saab 21—and later western
Europe's first swept wing jet fighter—the Saab 29), the war’s end convinced
company executives to diversify into other markets. Under the guidance of Saab
directors Ragnar Wahrgren and Sven Otterbiick, the decision was made in 1945 to
build an inexpensive passenger car for a Swedish market clamoring for such vehi-
cles.
Gunnar Ljungstrom began preliminary design ideas for the car with the aid of a
tiny fifteen-man staff. ‘‘I was only as much of a car enthusiast as boys are gener-
ally,’ Ljungstrom said of those days. ‘*Of our staff, perhaps two of us had driving
licenses.”’
But Ljungstrém’s ideas about automobiles were very definite and influenced
largely by the low price requirement for the new car and also by the prewar success
of the D.K.W. in Sweden. ‘*A simple car like the D.K.W. could be produced with
a minimum of special tools,’’ Ljungstrém told me. ‘*This was an important consid-
eration for us as tools would be a major expense. Unlike the D.K.W., however, I
never accepted anything but a metal body. Obviously steel is safer.’’ The two-
stroke engine, however, despite its lower tooling costs, would prove a mixed
blessing and engender controversy both within and without Saab for over a decade.
One day while Ljungstrém was busily at work, Saab’s newly-hired technical
illustrator walked into the office with some automobile sketches under his arm.
“None of us working on the car were really stylists,"? Ljungstrém said, ‘‘and then
Sixten Sason came up with this sketch and we made a model and everyone fell for it
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as being much like an airplane.”’ In fact, the car in Sason’s drawing looked like the
sliver of a wing section, a trifle bulbous at the nose but smooth and with enclosed
wheel arches. A year before Pininfarina, Kaiser-Frazer and Studebaker would set
the postwar styling trend of integrated fenders and bodies, Sason’s car employed
this design configuration. But then Sason—pilot, motorcyclist, artist, industrial
designer—was one of those rare people, a true original. Ljungstrém believed him a
genius, intensely creative yet with a firm grasp of what was practical.
Born in 1912, to a stone mason who encouraged his son to go to Paris and study
art, Sason eventually designed everything from sewing machines to fighter planes.
In the early Thirties he drew a little passenger car with a transverse engine-gearbox
unit echoed a quarter century later by the Austin Mini. He designed a car with
safety doors that slid open and shut, features seen on some of today’s ESV’s. In
1941, he drew a delta-winged missile-firing jet fighter that, although it must have
seemed like a Buck Rogers dream in its day, is shockingly similar to the Saab
Draken and Viggen fighters of the Sixties and Seventies. His interests went even
further. For Huskvarna, the motorcycle company which expanded into other areas,
Sason designed a line of home appliances. For ASJ, buses and trains. During 1955
he was consulted by Victor Hasselblad about designing parts of the famous SLR
camera system eventually used by American astronauts on the moon.
In 1946, Sason and Ljungstrom got down to details of the new Saab car. ‘*We
discussed whether it should be front or rear drive,’’ Ljungstrom told me. ‘‘For no
very technical reasons, we decided it should be front, mainly to keep most of the
mechanical parts at one point and also to increase interior room. Sason planned a
unit configuration for the engine and gearbox and we thought this would help
simplify production. At the time, we really didn’t consider the steering and hand-
ling benefits of front wheel drive.’’
Work on the prototype car—called Project 92—proceeded with some difficulty.
Most of Europe lay in rubble; passenger car production had all but ceased and up in
Sweden, the little Saab design team labored mainly on its own with no one to
consult on either supply or engineering difficulties. If they wanted to learn how
others had approached a particular problem, their only recourse was a nearby
junkyard from which they could ferret parts for study. Still, the first Saab prototype
was completed in 1946, an extremely advanced vehicle in many respects. Like all
Saabs ever since, the car possessed front wheel drive (now used on nearly every
small European sedan) and a unit-constructed body—with a fully enclosed
bottom—of great strength and aerodynamic efficiency. Wind tunnel studies at the
Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm revealed a drag coefficient of only
0.32. Of postwar sedans produced in any quantity, it may only be Panhard and
Citroén which so stressed aerodynamics, in both cases five to ten years after Saab.
If it was smooth, the little prototype was also rugged and the 92 may possibly be the
strongest little sedan ever built. With its 25 hp vertical twin two-stroke of 764 cc,
the car achieved 60 mph. Suspension was independent all round and based on
transverse torsion bars and telescopic shocks.
As Saab looked ahead to production of the 92, the company received a sudden
shock from their well-established competitor, Volvo, which was also planning a
new car. It was the vehicle’s projected price which dismayed Saab engineers.
Volvo announced that its new car would sell for only 4400 kroner (a Swedish
kroner was then worth twenty-seven cents): Saab had arrived at a similar figure just
for manufacturing expenses! Some frantic cost-cutting was apparently in order and
such frills as an exterior trunk lid were among the first to be shelved. Ljungstrom
and his co-workers were depressed by the cost-cutting measures, knowing the 92
was now less than it might have been. Ironically, Volvo wasn’t able to sell their
new car, the PV 444, for the projected price after all. They had underestimated
their figures and raised the price to 8000 kroner, some 800 more than the 92.
While a number of subsequent Saab 92 prototypes were built on a wooden jig in
1947—in June that year the car had its press introduction—efforts were under way
to acquire the necessary machinery to put the car into production. With European
heavy industry still largely decimated, Saab turned to the U.S. and contracted for
three presses from Clearing Machine in Chicago to stamp out body panels. As Saab
engineers waited anxiously for the chance to build the first production 92, the
presses—the largest weighing ninety tons—presented nearly insurmountable prob-
lems of transport through the Trollhattan locks and under bridges. When they
The first production Saab at left, a 1950 92, is from the Saab Museum. It was succeeded by the 93. A 1959 93F and its three-cylinder engine are shown above.
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sae
finally did arrive at the factory, one of the presses was found to have been delivered
upside down, causing further delay. Then after the huge machines were at last set
up, Saab’s engineers and workmen realized to their dismay that no one knew how
to turn them on. The controls and circuits were quite different from European
machinery.
The momentary befuddlement was soon overcome of course and towards the end
of 1948, a pre-production run of twenty cars was built and in October 1949, The
Autocar presented a detailed report and driving impression of the new Saab 92. The
magazine’s tester congratulated Saab and Gunnar Ljungstrém on a car with ‘the
road-holding of real sporting machinery’’ and ‘‘found it very difficult to fault on
any major point.’*
The Saab's simple plain-bearing engine was mounted transversely in front of the
front axle, its generator belt-driven from a take-off on the three-speed gearbox.
Like all Saabs until 1971, the 92 was fitted with a freewheel device in the transmis-
sion. This was an obvious necessity with a two-stroke, for if subjected to normal
engine-braking type driving with their throttles closed, two-strokes suffer insuffi-
cient lubrication and eventual failure. If the engine could not be used for braking
—two-strokes develop relatively little retarding power anyway—freewheeling did
have the advantage of helping achieve 40 mpg and permitted clutchless downshifts
(Saab never recommended clutchless upshifts, however, pointing out that excessive
synchro ring wear would result). Longevity of the 92°s powerplant was generally
good, some examples covering 150,000 miles.
“Although the Saab 92 bristles with many novel features,’’ concluded The
Autocar’s road tester, **it is its performance that wins the day. As a medium for
putting in fantastic average speeds over rough, twisty roads it has few rivals in its
Saab's first sports car prototype, the fiberglass 93-based Sonett was designed by Rolf Mellde in 1956. It is on display at the Saab Museum
class....1 cannot help thinking about the performance it might put up in, say, the
Monte Carlo Rally, with a slightly hotter engine ....The Model 92 is definitely a
sports car in spirit. It will provide the Scandinavian motorist with considerably
more than just family transport at a fairly low price.”’
The magazine's prediction of competition success was to be quickly fulfilled
thanks to Saab’s chief test engineer, a twenty-five-year-old car enthusiast named
Rolf Mellde. Mellde proved an ideal addition to Saab when he joined in 1946 and
together with Ljungstrém and Sason was one-third of a redoubtable trio. Two
weeks after the first production car left the factory in 1950, Mellde won Sweden's
popular Winter Rally. Almost from the beginning then, rally enthusiasts turned to
Trollhattan for cars, among them Norway's Greta Molander who posted an impres-
sive string of first es in the Ladies Class, winning it at Monte Carlo in 1952 and
taking the Women’s Rally Championship in 1953.
While Molander, Mellde and others were showing what the Saab 92 could do in
competition, rank and file motorists were anxiously waiting for cars of their own.
The market was so obvious that Saab was not the only Swedish firm— other than
Volvo—hoping to serve it. In 1946, Sweden's largest car dealer, Gunnar Philipson,
decided to build a Swedish car patterned after the D.K.W. which he had so success-
fully imported before the war. A prototype—labelled the Philipin—was con-
structed near Stockholm during 1946 by Svenska Bilfabriken, the former assembler
of Dodge and Plymouth cars in Sweden during the Thirties. Philipson scrapped his
plans when he learned of the Saab 92—as did a Danish Volvo dealer who had
planned a two-stroke car of his own—and instead contracted with Saab to purchase
and sell all the cars they could build, initially some 8000 or the anticipated full
production of the first two years.
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Yet despite a ready market and established outlet to sell its cars, Saab was unable
to meet its modest goal of 4000 vehicles during the first year and in 1950 turned out
but three cars per day, a total of 1246, all of them painted green. The difficulties in
producing a new automobile are legion, however, and Saab management was not
overly distressed by the initial problems. The airplane branch of the company was
doing well—having received a substantial boost from the advent of the cold war
—and the automotive executives were concerned primarily with establishing a
sound basis for future production.
Although the cars were in demand and popular, Gunnar Ljungstrom—ever the
perfectionist—was anxious to move ahead and improve. ‘‘People were expecting a
lot from Saab,” he told me forthrightly and perhaps a little ruefully, ‘much more
than they actually got....1 was always saying, “we can’t be satisfied.’ But the
directors would point out that Philipson was satisfied. Well, it was a seller's market
to a very pronounced degree.”
Still, changes were made and the 92 received a larger back window, exterior
trunk lid and with the introduction of the 92B in 1954, 28 hp and some new trim.
By March 1954, some 10,000 Saabs had been built and the company expanded its
facilities to Gothenburg—forty-five miles south of Trollhittan—where all engine
and transmission assembly was now centered. In 1956, a new Saab was introduced,
the 93, boasting a redesigned suspension—coil springs all round and a U-shaped
beam rear axle—and a new two-stroke engine.
The 93°s powerplant was a three-cylinder 748 cc unit that developed 33 hp and
had a substantially smoother idle than its predecessor, Very similar in appearance
to the D.K.W. two-stroke, Saab’s new aluminum head engine was, in fact, de-
signed by Hans Miiller, an independent engineering consultant who had also been
retained by the German company before the war. The new engine’s built-up crank-
shaft rested in four hefty roller bearings while the wrist pins were supported in
needle bearings. It was mounted in a normal front to rear position with the radiator
behind it—as in the 92—and cooled by a belt-driven fan. A rather novel device, the
fan was affixed to the end of a shaft which ran above the engine from its pulley at
the engine front to the rear of the block where the fan itself was mounted and
protected by a wire shroud. Humorists promptly recognized the set-up as a single
overhead fanshaft but the fan did much to solve cooling difficulties sometimes
encountered with the earlier 92.
Perhaps the most important change Miiller effected when compared to his earlier
D.K.W. engine was a replacement of its make-and-break, three coil ignition system
with a standard coil and distributor. The distributor's location, however, at the very
front of the engine, proved to be a problem which bedeviled Saab drivers for almost
a decade. Exposed to the elements, though supposedly protected by both a metal
shield and a curtain operable from within the car, the distributor was prone to
drowning in the rain—this in addition to the two-stroke’s normal sensitivity to
moisture in its ignition system. Various distributor caps were developed by Saab,
the most ingenious and last word appearing in the Sixties. This cap was force-vent-
ilated by a plastic hose some three feet long which carried air from the cowl air
intake to the cap itself in an effort to keep things dry. Even this wasn't always
sufficient and Saab drivers were well-advised to thoroughly and carefully cover
their car's distributor with a plastic bag to help keep out water. The problem was
finally solved for good in 1965 when the radiator was moved in front of the engine
increasing the car’s length a few inches and permitting a conventional fan and
generally-improved cooling system as well.
Two 1963 Saabs, the rugged 95 station wagon with rear window spoiler and the 96 which boasted increased power and more rear seat and luggage room than the 93.
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Although the 93 was undoubtedly an improvement on its forebears, and gave
Rolf Mellde more opportunity for tuning and development, Gunnar Ljungstrom
was already unhappy that the rudimentary two-stroke engine had been retained.
“By 1950, it was no longer right,’* he believed. ‘‘By then we could see that cars
would not remain so elemental for long.’’ But if Ljungstrém detected a shift in the
marketplace towards a more refined expensive car as people began to enjoy greater
Postwar prosperity, Saab had by now become successfully associated with two-
strokes and management opted to continue its strategy of providing inexpensive,
safe and durable transport. And a four-stroke didn’t fit in.
Then too, the two-stroke’s advantages, as Saab was quick to point out, were
obvious and attractive. For one thing, of course, a two-stroke was simpler than its
four-cycle brethren, lacking the many parts needed for a valve train. The case may
have been oversimplified at times but the three-cylinder engine did have only seven
basic moving parts: a crankshaft, three connecting rods and three pistons. Tune-up
costs were correspondingly low and there have been few cars faster or easier to
service than a two-stroke Saab. Cold weather starting was another advantage: with
no crankcase oil to thicken overnight, the two-stroke could be counted on to spin
readily to life.
Of course there was never any oil to change either but this was ever a dubious
blessing since many potential customers were doubtless scared off by the necessity
of adding a quart of oil and then their eight gallons of gas. This problem didn’t exist
in Sweden—where premixed fuel was sold at the pump—as much as it did in the
U.S. and was largely solved altogether in the mid-Sixties when oil-injected ver-
sions were introduced. By then, as we'll see, it was too late. Whatever its irritants
though, the Saab 93 and its successor were very reliable cars if maintained well and
driven with understanding. The two-stroke engine, infamous for its pop corn
machine idle, was turbine smooth at speed and quiet as well.
Up until 1956, Saab had concentrated primarily on the Scandinavian market.
Now, with the 93, Saab president Tryggve Holm—a strong and resourceful
executive—hoped to sell cars in the U.S. too, if even in a small way. This wasn’t
the very first Saab effort in the U.S. for in 1950, Saab’s U.S. representative had
examined the 92 with an eye towards reducing tooling problems. At that time,
Ralph Millet, an M.1.T.-trained engineer who was concerned mainly with purchas-
ing aircraft components in the U.S. for Saab, demonstrated the 93 to Willys-Jeep
which was interested in a possible license. In the end, neither Willys-Jeep nor
Ralph Millet really believed Americans would buy a two-stroke car and there the
matter rested until Holm entered the picture.
““My response was negative,’’ Ralph Millet told me of his reaction to Holm’s
proposal. ‘‘I believed that selling two-strokes in the U.S. was impossible. Gunnar
Ljungstrém agreed.”’
Nevertheless both men found themselves and ten Saabs on hand for the first
International Automobile Show at the New York Coliseum in 1956. The extent of
Saab’s marketing research had been Holm’s impulsive yet intuitive idea. ‘‘We were
Just sort of another car at the show,”’ Millet remembered, ‘‘not all that exciting but
a few dealers did approach us and various overtures were later made by Alec
Ulmann and also a nibble from Max Hoffman as possible distributors. But we
didn’t know what to tell them. We were not incorporated in the U.S. as a car
company but just had a purchasing office for aircraft components . Then too I had
difficulty getting decisions out of Sweden as to which way they wanted to go.”*
Ljungstrém confessed surprise that there was any U.S. interest at all in the little
Carlsson ‘on the roof” after placing third in the 1964 Monte. Sason's 96-based Sonett prototype built in 1965 was not chosen for production. It is in the Saab Museum.
car. **I didn’t think it could sell there,”’ he said. ‘‘Or if it did, I didn’t think it would
last long. I felt its price would have been too high (the Saab 93 cost $1895). ””
While the indecision in Sweden continued, Millet who found himself with ten
Saab 93's on his hands, used his own initiative to form a little company called Saab
Motors and sold the cars to new car dealers in the Northeast. He found himself
involved in preparing them, delivering them and setting up a spare parts depart-
ment, the latter in an office closet. In the fall of 1956, the parent company took over
Millet’s New York organization, named him president, and decided to look more
seriously at the American market.
Concerned now about getting some publicity for the new import, Millet sug-
gested that the Great American Mountain Rally in New England would be an apt
proving ground. The factory was intrigued enough to send over Rolf Mellde and a
second car was entered for American sports car enthusiast Bob Wehman and his
navigator Louis Braun. Thus two Saab 93's were among the event's sixty-two
starters, all cars flagged off on a November midnight from New York City’s 79th
Street Boat Basin by Juan Mafuel Fangio and honorary starter René Dreyfus. To
the astonishment of everyone—except perhaps its crew—the Wehman/Braun Saab
won the event outright and Saab also won the team prize, with Mellde, though he'd
had some trouble, finishing sixth. After the rather disorganized arrangements at the
car show, Saab was now getting off to a more promising start in America.
Saab wisely concentrated its initial U.S. efforts in New England where the car’s
strongest points—its powerful heater, fine handling on ice and snow and all around
toughness—would show to best advantage. With delightfully accurate Steering, an
honest top speed of 75 mph, roomy interior for its size and tremendously strong
front end and clutch, the Saab offered more car than many of its competitors and a