Saab Bites the dust

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?It was designed to provide transportation under miserable weather conditions.?

I worked with a ComputerVision programmer that had one.

Reply to
Cliff
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You know why it was called Saab? Because that is what you did as you went to the bank to pay for repairs.

Reply to
Bill McKee

Like the alternator and water pump being on the same belt-driven driveshaft so water pump seal leakage flowed directly into the alternator. Independent front suspension but solid axle in the rear.

Good intentions but never a very good design. Except for the V4 engine when allied with Ford. Wonder if their fighter jets were any better?

Reply to
Curly Surmudgeon

Cliff wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Was that at GM Hughes Electonics.......?

Reply to
HoLmEs

Ya ya das is svedish you know along wtih de wolwo.

~g~

Reply to
cncmillgil

No, never worked there. Just for other GM groups & divisions, among other firms. Here:

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Before GD bought them. They used & supported quite a bit of their own custom software so needed experts & applications engineers to write & maintain it (plus many CV features were developed for them in the first place). The guy from CV had been RIFed from CV IIRC and was also there on contract. Last I heard they had reused/recycled much of my code for added projects .

Oldest shipyard in the US. IIRC The JOHN S. McCAIN was commissioned while I was there & the president attended.

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Some ship, anyway.

Reply to
Cliff

I had a '68 Saab 96 with the V4. Put about 150K miles on it, and it was used when I got it. Great car for jumping hump back bridges etc., very difficult to bottom out, and the suspension was almost impossible to break. Had a 390 cubic inch big block Ford V8 to haul to the machine shop for a rebuild and no pickup truck at the time. It just fit in the Saabs trunk. The guys at the machine shop jaws dropped when I opened the trunk to unload it. Great car for taking to the ski slope, I had a neat trick for getting out of a snowy or icy parking slot...turn wheel all the way to the left stop, pull the hand brake on, put in reverse and dump the clutch...the result was amazing..the car would rotate about it's centerline, and if you timed it right you could just shift into first and just drive off in the opposite direction. With studded snow tires it was better than some four wheel drives of the time, with like 65% or better of the weight on the front wheels, a flat bottom, and a lot of ground clearance.

Reply to
oldjag

Remember those great winter rally battles in the '60s, between Erik Carlsson (Saab) and Paddy Hopkirk (Mini Cooper)? They were spectacular. Saabs were a real premium small car in those days.

One of my buddies in high school had one of the 3-cyl., 2-stroke originals. Very clever cars. But the freewheeling transmission would scare the piss out of you if you didn't know it was there.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I spent a year in Sweden in the mid 1970s, and I recall the 2-stroke Saabs. The farmers loved them, as they were dead easy to repair. As the story goes, the engine had only seven moving parts. I don't know if this is exactly true, but still the engines were very simple. And no electronics of course.

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joseph Gwinn

Saab had a 3-cyl 2-stroke? I remember DKW(or some German car) had one but not Saab... Gas tank was in the firewall between the engine and dashboard. Pour in a quart of oil and 10 gallons of gasoline.

Reply to
Curly Surmudgeon

I think that was the case: three pistons, three con rods, and a crankshaft. I think it had reed valves. 850 cc, but you could do some tricks to it and make it pretty hot -- maybe it was squaring the ports.

I raced against one in SCCA, back around 1970. It was very credible.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I had a 850 GT (whenever it was that they came out) and it was very good vehicle. Those were the ones with the oil tank and metered total loss lub. so didn't have to mix the oil in the gas. Did have Weird spark plugs they called them surface gap, ie. the center electrode was at the same surface as the insulator and outer shell. ...lew...

Reply to
Lewis Hartswick

Yup, that's how they started. The two-stroke was better lubricated starting in cold weather. Knowledge of this is an indicator of one's age.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Yes, they were used in outboards, too. The design resisted fouling much better in two-strokes, before electronic ignition.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

======== You will probably enjoy the following sites:

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Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

Good stuff, George. I remember those Lancias. A guy in my club had three or four of them. Very unusual.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

======== FWIW --

While GM has owned SAAB for about 20 years, it was only during the last ten years of ownership that GM "converted" SAAB from a car manufacturing company with extensive aerospace engineering and design capability into a car assembly operation, after they took complete control c.2000.

It now appears that most if not all of the SAAB design/engineering capability has been dissipated. Operationally they now assemble custom Opel Vectras and Saturn Auras with the ignition lock relocated from the steering column to between the front seats.

The major SAAB sales barrier appears to be that when potential buyers do their due diligence they discover just how hollowed out SAAB has become, and what they would be buying is a "bitsa" kit car assembly operation, not a car design/engineering/manufacturing operation, with GM the sole source of the most critical components. Same story as Saturn and Pensky.

I have never owned a 93 or 95, but owned and drove a 1974 99 for

280k miles. Not completely trouble free, but a good honest car, and I wish I could buy another.

Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

Yeah. The push to consolidate platforms and engines,which has been going on for decades but which really took off with Ford/Mazda, Renault/Nissan, GM/Opel/Saab, etc. a little over a decade ago, will result in a world with about a dozen different cars, say the people who follow it closely.

Economy of scale is really in the driver's seat. See "New Trade Theory."

Reply to
Ed Huntress

My old '62 220SB was great in deep snow. The unibody "rails" coming back from the engine area to under the passenger compartment acted a bit like rails/skis & it would about float over deeper snow. Rust was a problem ...

Reply to
Cliff

IIRC They were implementing Unigraphics in the '96 timeframe. I had been asked to go & help on contract but had already committed to another job.

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Reply to
Cliff

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