, a Saab developed in partnership with Fiat was built. This was the 9000
, and I’ve found a late-production example in a Denver boneyard.
Saab began working with the mighty Fiat Empire during the late 1970s, resulting in a rebadged and mildly Scandinavized Lancia Delta known as the Saab-Lancia 600. That car’s closest U.S.-market relative was the Fiat Strada
, which lived on the same platform. The 600 didn’t sell well and disappeared without leaving much trace, but the Fiat- Saab dealings led to the development of a new platform cooked up by Saab and Lancia engineers, with Giorgetto Giugiaro in charge of the styling: the Type Four
.
There were four car models built on the Type Four platform: the Lancia Thema, Fiat Croma, Alfa Romeo 164 and Saab 9000. The 9000 was the first to hit European showrooms, in 1985, and it made its North American debut as a 1986 model. 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 (which was a mid-1970s design based on the late-1960s Saab 99‘s chassis), though it didn’t weigh much more.
9000 production continued through 1998, after which the Opel-related 9-5 took over. 9000 sales overlapped with the similarly GM-derived New 900, beginning with the 1994 model year.
U.S.-market 9000s were available with naturally-aspirated and turbocharged versions of the good old Saab four-cylinder, with ancestry stretching all the way back to the Triumph Dolomite
. This car had the 2.3-liter turbo engine (prior to a junkyard shopper removing it), rated at 200 horsepower and 238 pound-feet. For the 1995 through 1998 model years, American car shoppers could buy a new Saab 900 or 9000 with a 3.0-liter Isuzu V6 under the hood.
This car has the base five-speed manual transmission and not the optional four-speed automatic, as is proper for a Saab. If you insisted on the slushbox in your ’97 9000 with four-cylinder power, the price tag was $1,095 ($2,140 in 2024 dollars).
The MSRP for this car was $31,695, or about $62,221 in today’s money.
It didn’t quite reach 200,000 miles during its life. I have never found a discarded Saab showing better than 300,000 miles on its odometer; the best-traveled junkyard Saab I’ve documented was a 1986 900 with 290,699 miles
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