We’ve covered the Saab 96 a few times before here, but let’s take a look what R&T had to say about the new V-4 engine, bought from Ford. It was a fairly radical change for Saab, whose reputation was pretty deeply entwined with two-stroke engines. In the US, they were really the only two-stroke player left, except for the marginal Subaru 360. But the times were changing, and the inevitable blue smoke wasn’t going to work anymore, both environmentally as well as just the perception.
The new V-4 acquitted itself well, but it also demanded a fairly hefty premium, price-wise. And the two-stroke didn’t totally disappear yet; it was still available in a lower-trim “Shrike” version. But it would be gone after one more year.
There’s a curious circular aspect to the compact Ford V-4 being used in the Saab, as Ford bought two Saab 93s back in 1959 or so to use as mules for the new V4 engine they were developing for their FWD Cardinal/M12. It’s a good thing Ford decided to build the V4, because it’s a bit hard to imagine what other engine might have fit up there except for the Lancia V4, which would undoubtedly have been more expensive.
The 1498 cc mill churned out 73 hp @5000 rpm, although R&T wondered if some of the ponies had strayed, as acceleration was a bit slower than anticipated. A 0-60 time of 17.5 seconds and a quarter mile in 21.2 @65 mph was not much faster than a VW Beetle 1500, if at all.
That’s not to say it was a “slow” car, because its handling and chassis dynamics allowed it to make the most of that power. The body was very rigid, making it feel like a heavier car. It was dun to push it hard into curves and use full throttle to power out of them, without any drama. R&T reverted to the old axiom of a slow car being more fun to drive fast, by pointing out that a Mustang GT with wider tires could undoubtedly motor through the same curves with little or no drama, but not as much fun as having the Saab scrabble through on its skinny tires.
The upright seating position and controls were all given positive marks. The 96 was of course the most recent evolution of the only car they had built to date for almost twenty years, so it was well sorted out and quality was high.
In 1967, Saab was still quite a small player on the market, having sold some 8,000 cars in 1966. They were only just then opening up a distributor for the West Coast, which helps explain why Saabs were much more common in the east than west back then. They were something of a New England specialty, given the snow and all.
When I got my first car, a ’68 Saab 95 V-4, in 1971, this article was a strong influence.
They said they expected to get flak from Saab buffs because of the performance figures. A couple of months later they ran a brief follow-up piece with revised performance figures. At the time of the original test, the throttle on the test car hadn’t been opening all the way.
You mention New England and dealers.
The second SAAB dealer in the US was in Cape Cod, and owned by that quite brilliantly nutjob writer called Kurt Vonnegut. It’s got to be the only example ever of a big literary name having an active involvement in the car industry, not including monied enthusiast purchases. I’ve got no idea how he ended up being so, as there seems no connection between his past and being (briefly) in such a position, but so it is.
I like the idea of a car sold by a writer. Surely, if ever there was a car that would fit that bill, it’d be a weirdists 95/6SAAB, which is surely a bit abstract for many.
The link below is from A Man Without A Country, a collection of wacky little pieces by Vonnegut. Highly recommended, especially if you’re a friend of the slightly unhinged.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/have-i-got-a-car-for-you
A big literary name involved in the car industry was John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom. Of course he (Rabbit) was a fictional character. But I always liked how Updike wove some of Rabbit’s dealership experiences into the novels, including the launch of Lexus in the final book. I test drove a two-stroke 96, but I’ve never driven the V4 as far as I can remember, only ridden as a passenger. My perception is that the four stroke 96 would have been more successful with a sportier engine, but perhaps the 96 platform was just too dated by the late sixties.
I always liked these cars, although I never owned one. I once drove a ’68 V4. The only thing I didn’t like was no side rest for your right foot, on that flat floor. When I pumped gas part-time in high school, an older woman would come in to our “cheap gas” gas station, in her Saab stroker. She’d hand me her own can of 30 weight Havoline, that I’d use in the fill up, and off she’d go in a cloud of blue smoke, that little engine singing it’s tune.
My dad was an engineer and fell in love with the two-stroke SAABs around 1960. He love the simplicity of the engine, and liked to say (tongue-in-cheek) “The redline of a two-stroke engine is one rpm less than the destruction point of the materials”.
But….
We had a series of them – as in two sequential pairs of matching ‘his n’ hers’ white 93/95’s. They were great cars for our “snow belt” environment, once you learned to keep the momentum up…miss a shift at the bottom of a hill and you’d be there for a week or so slowly climbing in 2nd -“two stroke torque” is an oxymoron. Still, once rolling they could be pretty fast for what they were. My dad loved to frighten his friends by bombing along snowy roads at an indicated 100….(Dad would set expectations by mentioning that SAABs had recently won the Monte Carlo Rally). He said most people in the U.S. had never heard of Kilometers Per Hour and because the car was so small and noisy and the engine was just screaming away, passengers were always ready to believe he was driving around at 100 MPH. He admitted that the actual 60 MPH he was going was still too fast, but what the hell. The cars generally handled pretty well for the times. His coworker who also fell under the spell of SAAB rolled his car into a snow bank one winter day… resulting in his being almost 15 minutes late for work. Yes, there was damage to the car, of course: the acid from the battery spilled out and ruined the paint on the underside of the hood. Good solid cars. And then there was my mother’s accident. She was hit from behind by a woman in a Buick; my mom was on a steep sloped hill late one evening and lady who hit her said she couldn’t believe that the SAAB was going so slowly. Hit in the right rear, my mom drove home on three wheels. No “cell phones to the rescue” in those days.
This happened right around the time the V4 SAAB’s appeared and my dad test drove one (along with a Sonnet but that’s a story for another CC). I remember being thrilled that the V-4 could “accelerate” going uphill. Still, my mom was a bit disenchanted after the accident, and 2-Stroke/4-Stroke was a distinction without a difference to her…. and then there was Sticker Shock too. The article above shows a sticker price for the SAAB of around $2500. That is right on the price of a new 1968 Plymouth Valiant with the Slant 6 (another engineer’s favorite) … which is what he bought my mom.
Saab rally driver Erik Carlsson was a/k/a “On the Roof” because he rolled a Saab at least once, so your father’s coworker was in good company!
“A 0-60 time of 17.5 seconds and a quarter mile in 21.2 @65 mph was not much faster than a VW Beetle 1500, if at all.”
I thought this was incorrect, but interestingly the elapsed time in the quarter mile for the 1967 VW Beetle 1500 tested by Road & Track was a surprisingly-close 21.7 seconds. It seems remarkable that the ET would be so close, considering that the Saab hit 60 miles per hour 5.3 seconds sooner than the VW and completed the quarter mile at a speed 6 miles per hour higher than the Beetle(more than 10%!) on its way to a top speed that was 16 miles per hour higher.
The SAAB 96 had a very heavy body, much thicker sheet metal than anything else on the market at that time. It was considered the safest car on the market. If you needed quicker acceleration times you went for the lighter SAAB 97 Sonett with fiberglass body, dash, and bucket seats.
My first car was a red 1968 V4 silver block 1500 and my second was a cream 1969 blue block 1700. My third was a white 1973 blue block that had been rolled. My red one died of cancer (rust) after I had owned it about three years. The cream one ran for years and I sold it and my parts collection about 10 years later. I really should have kept it. I miss having them around they were great fun to drive and I did many road rallies. While acceleration wasn’t their strong suit they could keep a high average speed because they handled so well. People were always surprised that I could keep up and pass them on back roads particularly on snow or ice.
Some of the early 1500 engines had an open deck design, and then after a certain point they were closed deck. I don’t remember which color corresponded to which design. When I was in the market for a Saab, a Saab expert told me the open deck engines were oddball and to be avoided. Gaskets for the open deck engine became unobtanium decades ago. IIRC the 1700 engine was introduced in 1971, at least in the US.
My first car was a red ’68 95 V4. It was T-boned by a Plymouth Duster at ~25 mph, but my passenger and I walked away unhurt.
Next up, a dark green ’69 96. At some point I found a light gray-blue ’68 96 with a better body than the ’69. I bought it and had my mechanic swap the engine (which had recently had a valve job) from the ’69) into it. When it came time for a full engine overhaul a few years later, I had the engine converted to 1700. Different crank, different pistons, same rods.
Odd that freewheeling was kept for the 4-stroke. There was no practical need for it; perhaps home market buyers had come to expect it? I’ve driven both and the 2-stroke was more fun to throw around curvy mountain roads. Had to be really careful, though, to not let the drum brakes fade away.
I made the mistake of trying out the freewheel coming down the hill on Interstate 77 near Fancy Gap, Virginia. I was doing over 100 mph at the bottom thankfully the traffic was light. You don’t realize how much of an impact engine braking has. Glad the old girl could handle the speed.
There’s a truckdriver currently on trial for vehicular homicide on I-70 in Golden, Colorado who didn’t realize how much of an impact engine braking had. He ended up killing four people and injuring six others. The mystifying thing is that he didn’t use the available runaway truck ramp that would have saved all those people.
It was also kept for the early 99s. In the early 1970s Road & Track got an inquiry to their “Technical Correspondence” column from a 99 owner asking whether he should use the freewheel. They thought not. They surmised that Saab had kept the freewheel because their rally drivers used it on ice.
On hilly country roads on could save gasoline by having free wheeling on.
Used to own Saab 96 1976 in Finland.
I don’t believe that the 96 was ever sold in Canada. I would have expected that it would have been a good market after New England but I guess that entering a new country would have a high overhead and risk.
My father was an automotive engineer and he was intrigued by the Saab, particularly the 2-stroke (only 7 moving parts!). In the early 60s we were on a trip in northern Ontario when he spotted one filling up with gas. It had Maine plates. We made a quick turn and pulled in behind the Saab. The driver was nice enough to open the hood so my dad could see the engine and explain it to me.
No, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. I used to subscribe to the Chicago Saab Club newsletter published by Dick Grossman, and there was a minister in New Brunswick who had a 95 or 96.
For the 1982 Labor Day weekend I took the ferry from Seattle to Victoria. At one point I saw a B.C.-plated 95 in traffic, but I wasn’t able to talk to the owner.
Given Saab’s relatively low volume, I’m sure assembling cars in Canada, as Volvo did in Halifax, NS, would have been a non-starter.
I had a couple of blue V-4s of this vintage, mostly for parts for the tan Saab 95 I was fixing up.
Earlier ones continued to use a slightly beefed up transmission from the 2-stroke. I rebuilt one of those. I should have counted the myriad washers and spacers that seemed to make up most of the bulk of that transmission outside of the gears. A real rube goldberg affair.
If you were into clever mechanical simplicity and honest, no nonsense practicality you had to like these. I adored them. But they could drive you crazy.
Mostly, I think, because they were built before computers had a hand in auto manufacture. That meant that component parts in a ’68 Saab were overbuilt. Very impressive to look at. But the very strength and quality of each separate part would often work its deviltry on a weak point somewhere else and something would break. Way too often.
Valiants and Darts, my next love affair, were the opposite. Computer designed to shave as much beef as possible from everything, the whole delicate end result was balanced. No strong parts to break down the weak ones. On the other hand, the parts themselves, looked like they were made out of recycled tin cans.
Mostly, I think, because they were built before computers had a hand in auto manufacture. That meant that component parts in a ’68 Saab were overbuilt. Very impressive to look at. But the very strength and quality of each separate part would often work its deviltry on a weak point somewhere else and something would break. Way too often.
Sounds like the opposite of The One-Hoss Shay:
https://grg.org/OneHossShay.htm
Er-ruhhh…say what? I’m having difficulty with most of this.
I’ve only ever seen one 96 and it was at an auto show in Victoria British Columbia. I had a good look at it and fell in love with the goofiness of it all. The best part is the goofy worked so well. I haven’t driven a 96 (obviously) but I did drive around a 1978 Saab 99 five door in my used car days. The thing was just so different driving it was a lot of fun. The alligator clip seat belt latches, for example, were a great idea. The key between the seats was a bit odd but the car drove really well. Even with the base motor it went just fine for the day.
One of the most important aspects of the car business is not spending money on gas. We habitually drove around with the needle in “E” and I ran the tank dry in the Saab, burning out the fuel pump. That was $300 out of pocket for me, an expensive lesson. I learned that if you want to drive a car, you have to put gas in it.
Based on the R&T diagram, was surprised how far forward the engine sat.
Nice barrier in a crash, but hell on the block, transmission, and frame.
I’m sure there were a fair number of write-offs with the insurance companies.
I loved these SAABs, the two stroke and the V4. My cousins, who were unusual, had the two stroke, and later I believe they had a V4. I remember looking at it with the hood open and despite my youth, I understood that the engine was tiny and way ahead of the axle. Years later I saw an Audi 100? I think with an inline 4 in front of the front wheels. That was a lot of understeer. Too bad the V4 was not a better engine. I drove a 99 a few times as a teenager and enjoyed it. So much faster than a Peugeot 404 or even 505. Road and Track had the best tech data page. Now, not so much.
There was a bit of symbolism in naming the 2-stroke the Shrike. A shrike is a bird that eats beetles.