The UR Saab is an absolute privilege to see in person. When you stop and consider, just for a moment, the genius engineers and designers at Saab, created this exceptional prototype back in 1948, that's nearly 80 years ago. Heavily inspired by their military aircraft and aerodynamics, the original prototype (Project 92001) looked like a sectional profile of an airplane wing, this highly aerodynamic shape gave it a drag coefficient of just 0.30, years ahead of the automotive industry.
I know there's far more detailed histories and facts on these early models, but as I walked around possibly the finest ever collection of Saabs, I wanted to include a basic overview of them (please correct me if any information is wrong).
As the exhibition begins, the glorious UR Saab prototype greets you at the door, Saab only ever built four of these, but a year later, they evolved in to the 92, the first ever Saab production car and a spacious family vehicle. These early models used tiny 25 horsepower, two-stroke engines and pioneered front-wheel drive which enabled them to conquer the harsh Swedish Winters. Also, a fact I didn't know, was that Saab had a huge surplus of cellulose-based camouflage paint from wartime aircraft production, so all early 92s were painted in a dark Military Green.
After a long and successful production run of 7 years and some 20,000 vehicles sold, Saab once again evolved their creation, and the 93, 95 and 96 models were born. The 93 was first introduced with a three-cylinder engine, whilst the later 96 eventually gained the mighty Ford V4 engine producing an impressive 68 horsepower in its final configuration. Saab enjoyed global sales success with these generation of cars, and decided to enter into Swedish motorsport, later gaining fame on the world motorsport stage. Victories in world rally events and a second in class finish at the 1959 Le Mans 24 Hours gave this small Swedish firm their huge reputation for reliability, endurance, speed and handling.
Almost 550,000 of this early generation Saabs were built over an incredible 20 year production run, which took them in to the 1980's and the birth of their mighty 99 series cars.
What the Saab Car Museum Box exhibition manages to do, is guide you through a collection of some of the finest examples, from early rally cars, to rare prototypes and gloriously renovated examples, I could spend an entire day just admiring them. I haven't ever had the pleasure of owning or driving one, but the history and promise they hold is inspirational.
