With all the scrapyard Saab history we’ve seen here, the Saab products that emerged from the Trollhättan-Torino alliance didn’t get what they deserved. A Saab developed in collaboration with Fiat was built between – and between – the Triumph-engined 900 Classics and the GM-era Saabs. This was the 9000 and I found a late production example in a cemetery in Denver.
Saab began collaborating with the powerful Fiat empire in the late 1970s, resulting in a redesigned and slightly Scandinavian Lancia Delta called the Saab-Lancia 600. This car’s closest relative in the US market was the Fiat Strada, which lived on the same platform. The 600 did not sell well and disappeared without leaving much of a mark, but the deals between Fiat and Saab led to the development of a new platform dreamed up by Saab and Lancia engineers, with Giorgetto Giugiaro in charge of the design: the Type Four.
Four car models were built on the Type Four platform: the Lancia Thema, the Fiat Croma, the Alfa Romeo 164 and the Saab 9000. The 9000 was the first to hit European showrooms in 1985 and made its model debut in 1986 in North America . We never got the Thema or Croma here, but the 164 eventually showed up in the United States as a 1991 model.
The 9000 was much roomier inside than the 900 (a mid-1970s design based on the late 1960s Saab 99 chassis), although it didn’t weigh much more.
Production of the 9000 continued until 1998, after which the Opel-related 9-5 took over. 9000 sales overlapped with the also GM-derived New 900 starting with the 1994 model year.
In the US market, the 9000 was available with naturally aspirated and turbocharged versions of the good old Saab four-cylinder, whose ancestors go back to the Triumph Dolomite. This car had a 2.3-liter turbocharged engine (before a junkyard buyer removed it) rated at 200 horsepower and 238 pound-feet. For the 1995 through 1998 model years, American car buyers could purchase a new Saab 900 or 9000 with a 3.0-liter Isuzu V6 under the hood.
This car has the five-speed manual transmission as standard, rather than the optional four-speed automatic as is typical for a Saab. If you insisted on the slushbox in your 1997 four-cylinder 9000, the price was $1,095 ($2,140 in 2024 dollars).
The MSRP for this car was $31,695, about $62,221 in today’s money.
It has covered less than 200,000 miles in its life. I’ve never found a discarded Saab that shows more than 300,000 miles on the odometer; The most driven junkyard Saab I documented was a 1986 900 with 290,699 miles. I’ve now written about eight retired Volvos that have passed the 300,000 mark over the course of their careers, including a 244 with So over 600,000 miles and a 740 Turbo that came within shouting distance of 500,000 miles. Make of it what you will.
The 1997 9000 Aero cost almost ten grand more than the 9000 CS.
Why drive a car when you can? pilot a Saab? This Bulgarian choral sound was still quite trendy in the UK in the late 1990s.