Oakland Street Sighting - 1968 Saab 95 V4

Today there's much talk in advertising of crossover SUVs that seat 7 or more passengers. No longer satisfied with full-size V8 Ford Expeditions and Chevy Suburbans, many buyers want interior space, carlike handling and fuel economy at the same time. Funnily enough, that's not a new formula. The minivan has offered that kind of practicality for decades, but minivans are so passé. Early Saabs were always compact family cars with small engines, and the 95 wagon offered three rows of seating for up to seven people. Seven very small or very skinny people. The 95 wagon and 96 sedan were initially powered by a 0.8 liter three-cylinder, two-stroke engine. This engine made 40 horsepower and smoked too heavily to comply with rising emissions standards as the decade wore on. In 1967 a Ford-built 1.5 liter V4 engine became available, now a four-stroke design for more power and less smoke.

Culver City Street Sighting - 1970 Saab Sonett III

The Saab Sonett is something of a mythical beast among Saab enthusiasts. It began as a lightweight two-seater open sports car with a 3-cylinder two-stroke engine producing 57.5 horsepower, primarily for racing, but rules changed and only six were built. The name Sonett refers not to the poetic form popularized by Shakespeare (spelled 'sonnet') but rather is based on a Swedish phrase meaning "so neat they are" or more loosely, "how cool is that?".

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 Saab 96 V4

Old imported cars are relatively common in the Bay Area, but most are German, Italian or Japanese. BMW 2002s and Alfa Romeo Veloce Spiders are everywhere. Vintage Swedes are also somewhat common, but most of the really old Swedish cars are Volvo Amazons and P1800s. San Francisco's yuppie population embraced Volvo and its fellow Swedish competitor Saab for their quirkiness and safety, and 1980s examples from both brands exist in large quantity.

But where 1960s Volvos survive and thrive in San Francisco, 1960s Saabs do not. Why is that? Were the early Saabs too unusual? Too slow? Too antiquated? The Saab 96 was a design which dated back to 1960, but the Volvo Amazon dated back to the mid-1950s. And the Volkswagen Beetle, the best-selling imported car in the US at the time, was first developed in 1938. Over half a million 96s were ultimately built over 20 years. Over 667,000 Amazons and some 21 million Beetles were built. So the Saab was rarer to start with, and was likely only a niche model in the US, making parts and service harder to come by.