The Saab 900 Turbo was the Tesla of its day | Revelations with Jason Cammisa | Ep. 15

This Swedish thing was the Tesla Model 3 of the last century. Tesla is currently worth more than the next six most valuable auto companies combined, so how is it possible that a small, niche automaker can be worth so much? It's the same reason why

saab

was so big. It wasn't a car company back then, so it did everything differently and many things better. It's a Saab 99. This is a Saab 900 and they are effectively the same car. More on that in a second, but when the 99 debuted in 1967. it was so ahead of its time that it more accurately predicted the future of the automobile than anything else until Tesla came along and to understand how that could happen we need to discuss where it came from.

Saab. Saab's first car was the 92 and appeared in 1947. As an aircraft manufacturer, the Saab car was different, the entire body was made from a single piece of metal that had cutouts for the windows. It started with a two-stroke two-cylinder, then got a two-stroke triple, and then inherited a four-stroke v4. that was two thirds of a ford cologne v6, you know, the engine from your friend's old ford explorer, the 92 93 94 95 and 96, they were all effectively the same car, they were in production for more than 30 years, but

saab

never It rested on its laurels by making constant improvements and in fact, about halfway through that 30 year run, Saab introduced its second new car in '99.

The '99 was still a very different type of car, Saab the aircraft manufacturer designed it. for crash safety using things like cargo routes, that's how they would design an airplane. fuselage so the 99 has a one-inch thick reinforcement that runs from the top of the A-pillar in a perfectly straight line to the base of the chassis to protect you in the event of a rollover. The Saab engineers were not stupid but they did enjoy being dropped on their heads, they dropped the 99 from eight feet high and the car barely noticed. The only thing safer would have been if the car refused to roll over in the first place like the

tesla

model x did because of the different shape it was in.

Designed, the 99 had a structure that was a third stiffer than other cars and that was not only good for crash safety, but also meant there were no squeaks or rattles and it could be made to handle well. The 99 lineage is also packed with industry firsts, like the first side-impact door, beams, the first windshield wipers, doors that extend beyond the threshold so your pants don't get dirty after driving in the snow, the first world's seat heaters and activated carbon cabin filtration, it had a curved windshield that left more room for your head in a crash plus it gave you great visibility and was good for aerodynamics.

It also had a flat undertray for that last reason and Saab claimed the 99 was tied with the Citroën ds for lowest drag coefficient. Oh, and by the way. This silly concave shape here wasn't meant to be silly, it was made after Saab spent some time in the wind tunnel in the 1960s and what they were seeing was the breakdown of airflow over the trailing edge of the roof and they wanted that limit of separation. cape to control wake turbulence, so it wasn't made to be dumb, it was made because they were dumb and dumb people bought sobs In 1972, a study of college professors showed a strange correlation between the car they drove and their political leanings in the presidential elections of that year. election richard nixon crucified george mcgovern in the second largest landslide in united states history only 37 and a half percent of the public voted for mcgovern but 98 of saab's driving academics voted for him the only group of people who They were more liberal than Saab drivers They were people who didn't own a car, which means that driving a Saab was the last step you would take before burning your bra and saying I'm going to ride my bike every day to save the environment with my sagging breasts fluttering in the breeze it sounds a lot.

Just like today's Tesla drivers, right? There is another similarity that occurred in 1978, when Saab put a

turbo

on the 99, turning it from a fast vehicle into a real car magazine cover. Fast car. It turns out that the liberals also really liked power at that time and that of Saab. Turbocharging like that of today's electric vehicles showed the clear direction of the future of powertrains. The 99 wasn't the first to go

turbo

, in fact it was a couple of years behind Porsche's 930 turbo, not to mention the limited production experimental turbos that came before, but this was very different in the first place.

It's not a purpose-built sports car, it's a family car, and secondly, Saab's goal with the turbocharger was not outright performance and bottom-line horsepower figures; Its goal was to maintain the efficiency of a relatively small four-cylinder, but by adding in the smooth, effortless torque of a much larger engine, very different from turbocharged sports cars, the Saab 99 turbo cemented the recipe for four-cylinder cars. silent and powerful today. More on that in a minute because the 99 turbo only lasted a year before the 900 arrived. like I said before the 900 is just an update of the 99, take a look, in fact from the driver's seat to the back they are identical, they use the same glass, the same doors, the same body panels, the same hatch, there were even some changes. front to help with new US crash regulations, the wheelbase was stretched by two inches and the front extended by eight, that critical rollover load path now formed a z, but it was still there, at the just like all the other quirky features of the 99, all put there because someone really thought.

In this regard, for example, the emergency brake worked on the front wheels because with a 60 40 weight distribution it is the front wheels that will best help keep the car in place, although curiously that was changed to the rear wheels in 1988 , which had to cause some accidents. I mean the good thing about the safety cage, the safety stuff continued. Saab required the car to be in reverse to get the key out and then the gear lever stayed locked in reverse and that meant a couple of things first, it meant you didn't have to. Use the e-brake in icy conditions where the e-brake cables like to freeze.

Number two, the immense Saab, would not move away down the hill when a naughty brat leaned over and put him in neutral and, third, most importantly, he moved the key away from the area that his right knee wants to occupy in the event of an entire accident. This interior was made by fighter jet designers, so the dashboard wrapped around it for easy access and peripheral visibility and the controls were clear, easy to read, and laid out in a way that put the things you used most often most near your line of sight, it's obvious now, but these were the days when other companies would place a radio at your feet, so the radio was up high, allowing college professors to more easily access educational content what do we buy. a saab, but why did you buy a swedish piece like that?

It's a safe car. See, even George Carlin knew these were safe cars. Speaking of comedy, he looks at that overhang and then looks at the actual overhang. It's huge and it's there forever. For this reason, this is a front-wheel drive car with a longitudinal engine that is located almost completely in front of the front axle, but then the engine is rotated 180 degrees so that it is rearward and then tilted at a 45-degree angle where it then drives the The drive through a chain is inclined at a 45 degree angle because the original '99 engine was half a Triumph Stag V8 and V8s are 90 degrees.

This is the front of the engine, that's where the V-belts and the alternator are, and that's the back of the engine, which means making a clutch on this engine is actually easier than replacing the V-belt and my favorite part, the exhaust comes out of the side of the head and heads towards the headlight where it then meets a turbocharger and then does a U-Turn skimming about a quarter of an inch off the battery sticker that says not to expose to excess heat before it finally makes its way to the rear of the car. Who did that?

What you can't see is the Saab. The APC system was the first to reduce thrust in response to the hit toward the end of its stroke. The compression ratio of the 900 turbo was 9 to 1. The Porsche 911 turbos had six and a half. What this meant was that the Saab Turbo was not dead. Off Boost Its unique wastegate design reacted to exhaust pressure, not intake charge, so the Saab Turbo's torque curve was more like that of a larger engine and maximum boost was only 8 or 10 psi so it wasn't making huge amounts of horsepower when the apc first came out it was 135 horsepower compared to the 110 versions of the n a.

That small difference meant it wasn't much faster at top speed or on the highway, but the low-end turbo torque meant the 900 turbo was really quick around town at the speeds we actually drive them at like today's electric vehicles. Rest of the driving experience Well, it was so good that the 99 came out in 1967, but the 900 was still competitive 20 years later, in fact, Saab was able to report sales increases every month for 60 consecutive months from 1982 to 1987, when The car was 20 years old, I could spend all day telling you how wonderful a Saab 900 turbo drives or showing you how ridiculously huge it is here or I could describe how beautiful my mom's 81 900 is.

The turbo would bounce around in the back of that truck on its monthly trip to the dealership or even just break down on the side of the road where it perpetually sat, but my mom loved it and so did everyone, including David and Davis, who I have to admit. I said it better than I ever could, so let's refer back to him and what he wrote when this car was new. The Saab 900 turbo is a Mercedes-Benz that left home one night during an acid experience and was never the same again. exists in an altered state, a wonderful combination of solid, sensible citizen values ​​with a propensity for the occasional disturbance of the peace, as if your rich uncle, state assistant, chairman of the Republican party and pillar of the Lutheran church, could sometimes disguise himself by joan crawford for marathon running the turbo is a practical and safe car that you, mom and the kids can use to escape the police.

Oh, he was definitely wearing tweed when he wrote that, from the looks of it, he was drunk, but everything David e wrote. In 1982 on the saab turbo it was applied to the current

tesla

model 3. safety efficiency speed and innovative thinking this is what a swedish crystal ball looked like can i drive it now? Okay so you're gonna follow the framed ferrari all the time right yeah okay action I'm not some rich youtuber asking you to like and subscribe hey up up up up up up up there, keep the ferrari away. I'm an automotive journalist asking you. like and subscribe and that's because that's how youtube works if you don't click those buttons youtube doesn't know that you liked what you just saw and it won't show you more and if you don't If you like what you just saw , join the club and by this I mean the Hagerty drivers club which gives you access to this award winning magazine as well as discounts on awesome stuff and if you still don't like what you've seen well then just leave a nasty comment because that's how the Internet works.

I need to clean that up.