This edition of Cold Start is going to be sort of a Saab-flavored grab bag of stuff, so if you’re looking for something more coherent or a theme beyond everyone’s favorite aircraft-inspired kooky Swedish car, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. Maybe one of the other car sites offers an early morning automotive reverie with stricter boundaries and more focus? I won’t stop you from looking at those, if so. But for today, what we’ve got is some Saab-related stuff that caught my attention, so we best get through this.
I’m focusing mostly on very early Saabs for the simple reason that I’m fiercely fond of early Saabs. They’re one of those cars that’s so carefully designed and objectively rational that they wrap around to being just bonkers things. Those early Saabs with their two-stroke DKW-inspired engines and streamlined bodies and oddly roomy interiors have so many qualities that just make sense, yet the complete package feels like a charming alien something hailing from a planet of ice and salted fish.
The first thing that really caught my attention, and what I alluded to first in the headline, is a little illustration of someone really exploring the cargo-hauling options of their Saab 92 and its folding rear seat:
Just take a moment to drink this little illustration in. No idea why this person is so against a pickup truck, because they could clearly make use of one, as those long red 2x4s or giant beef jerky strips are actually about as long as the car itself.
A good quarter-length of the car is sticking out the back there! I mean, sure, they seem to have hung what looks to be a coat hanger on the back there, but this is a gleefully mad act of haulage. I have nothing but respect for this Saab-sanctioned cargo-hauling suggestion.
Let’s get to the other part of the headline, my tease about some Mad magazine content. It’s in here, in this 1963 Saab 96 brochure:
Look at that dapper fella, who seems to think that newsstand is a lending library! Hey, Karl Karlsson! If you’re gonna read more than a paragraph, you gotta buy it! You’re sucking all the information out of that paper!
So, I was looking at all those magazines, and got curious; could I tell when this photo was taken by finding one of the magazine covers? I sure can, thanks to the distinctive Mad cover with the target:
That’s Mad number 71, from June of 1962! That makes sense, if you’re shooting pictures for your 1963 brochure, you’d probably want to do it about six months before 1963 happens! I can’t tell if it was translated to Swedish, like some of the ads behind it. Somehow I doubt Mad was translating their magazines much back then?
Speaking of print publications, I was interested to see this 1960 Auto Age article titled Saab Story, because I think pretty much every automotive publication has used this same punny title. Hell, I can think of about three times it’s been used in some context right here at the Autopian!
I’ll be honest – I can’t recall why I picked this shot, other than I always like luggage-packed trunk shots. This one is a bit less crammed and tetris’d full than they usually are. Is that a reverse lamp in the middle there?
There was some copy that also went on about the handsome taillights, which I agree with, as I’ve always liked those Hella units.
I always thought VW people should have swapped those out more often:
Okay, finally, I found one of those classic picnic shots for the Saab 92:
Like all of these, you’re likely wondering how they hell they ended up driving there, as there’s no road in sight, they’re just sitting there in the forest. This one is a little weirder, because you only see what seems to be a mom and son there, enjoying the picnic.
This wasn’t some early and progressive attempt to market to single moms, because if you look in the upper left you’ll see dad and some other kid, way the hell in the background. Why aren’t they by the car and food and others? What the hell is going on here?
Anyway, old Saabs! So good.
Back in the day I’d remove the top of the back seat from my Valiant and run long items through the trunk and leave the lid up for transport, pretty sure it would have worked in my Civic as well.
My first car was a 68 Saab 96 with the V-4. Logical, wonderful, and cheap. I loved driving the thing and when I bought it in 1974, battered and abused, you couldn’t put more than $5 in the tank – it wouldn’t fit!
I loved driving it and would still be doing so – but the floor fell out of the back seat one day, much to the bemusement of the back seat passenger. It was beyond saving, young, foolish me didn’t wash it enough and it was a rustbucket when I bought it.
My two-stroke ’67 96 must have a larger tank because I can put considerably more than $5 worth of fuel in it these days.
Mine finally succumbed to the tin worm in 1975. 8 gallon or so tank, and gas was less than 50 cents when I bought it.
Show of hands: how many people here have actually had a picnic on a blanket?
Have you never been to the beach?
Not a lot of beaches in the Midwest, and the parks have picnic tables.
What midwest are you in that you don’t have access to the great lakes or one of Minnesota’s 10,000?
You can’t swing a dead cat in Minnesota without hitting a lake.
Me. We used to have a picnic basket and everything. Some of the nicest places in the parks here are nice specifically because there’s no table attracting people.
These days though, getting back up off the ground is asking a lot.
I keep a blanket in the trunk just for this purpose! Ferris said it best: life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around, you might miss it. 🙂
I adhere to a related concept: I keep a towel in my car.
My aunt once described picnicking in the UK. They would all bring little cushions called ‘sit upons’ and have a ‘put upon’ tray for the food. When she arrived in Canada and saw a picnic table, it blew her mind.
Had one of those and stupidly let it go for a song after a year. It was 22 years old, has moss on the window rubber, but still ran like clockwork and was so comfortable. Mine had a Ford V4, which gave it a nice growl. Only ever saw that motor once after and that was in a Ford Cortina based herse…
I dunno…I’ve seen a lot of F-150 owners load lumber like that in their short beds. I realized the other day that while my Odyssey was designed to carry 4×8 plywood, most modern trucks aren’t!
Minivans make such great work vans. I’ve seen more than a few tradesmen using old beat-up minivans. My old apartment management company used a fleet almost exclusively comprised of 2nd gen Odysseys (which in the big ’25 made the newest one a minimum of 21 years old). It’s a shame that Toyota made the middle seats difficult (impossible?) to remove in the current gen Sienna; that’s really its only demerit. Hopefully in the next gen Sienna they fix that.
Ah, so we’ve learned that Torch’s spin-off of Red Shoe Diaries is the Red Saab Diaries.
Just look at your philandering shots of junk-filled trunks. You even started with a photo of oversized linear cargo right in the caboose!
I’m on to you Torch.
The little round thing below the trunk is the knob for unlatching the trunk lid.
That’s a bullnose 96. The 92 has suicide doors, as does the early 93. The later 93 has conventional doors but the body still has the earlier much more rounded shape at the back of its rear windows and it doesn’t have the “elephant ear” air vents immediately behind the rear windows. The 96 does.
In celebration of this article I’ll drive my two-stroke 96 to work today. If all goes well I’ll drive it home again this evening, too.
I just hope that folding rear seat has a message on it like:
WHEN YOU SAY “BORN FROM JETS,” IS THAT
THE ENGINEERS’ FACTUAL
FINDINGS OR JUST LUCK?
Then you get it ready to haul an unsafe load of lumber and you see “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?”
That’s advanced safety.
Aren’t you worried no-one will get your fold-in joke?
Zomg thank you for the assist, that’s amazing. Nice memories of Mad magazine’s folding page jokes
I’m not making a living here, so I aim for the “Dennis Miller Ratio” of 1% acceptance 🙂
I was looking for “What, me worry?” But I feel you.
I got the fold-in joke but my devotion to the marque requires me to point out that the rear seat in the sedan doesn’t fold (I mean, not by design; I imagine it could be forced to do so.). The rear seat back is its own separate piece which is mounted directly to the rear bulkhead and must be entirely removed in order to reveal the large pass-through to the trunk.
“Hey, Karl Karlsson! If you’re gonna read more than a paragraph, you gotta buy it!”
This is 1960s, in peak socialist Sweden. He is clearly exercising the spirit of Allemansratten or All Mans Rights to free use of even private property:
https://visitsweden.com/what-to-do/nature-outdoors/nature/sustainable-and-rural-tourism/the-right-of-public-access/
It’s a Scene from a Marriage.
Maybe they’re over there picking Wild Strawberries?
I see what you did there.
As a father of multiples, I’m certain they are just separating the kids so they don’t kill each other.
At first I got Ibsen vibes, but then I realized the boy just wanted to go shit like a bear but was afraid to go alone.
They’re just relaxing on the Saabbath
The rear fender cutline on these always bothered me, it’s like they wanted the sleek style of a 4-door with none of that pesky convenience.
Speaking as someone who drug home a ’73 Saab 96 the week before Christmas, I approve of this Cold Start.
Also, what’s wrong with me?
Good on you! I enjoyed the few years I had a 96 around. Women dug it, and dogs barked at it…
Not a thing!
Obviously I love this Cold Start
1962 is a good start, but where? Check out the reflection in the hubcap. From the prominent presence of the Nya Warlands-Tidningen on the Kiosk, I’m going to guess Karlstadt. Possibly in front of the Opera House:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/5FGE65XriZFykg3h6
Any better location guesses? As for dating, someone with access to the NWT archive might be able to find it based on the headlines.
I also think Karlstad is a good bet with 2 Norwegian newspapers and Borås Tidning there. I tried searching for the specific edition of both Stern and Året Runt to find a possible date for the picture.
I tried matching images for the Life magazine cover, as it was published weekly, but no luck. It’s possibly a distorted version of the December 7, 1962 edition. However, the Harper’s Bazaar magazine cover is definitely from April, 1963.
[LOL my reply is stuck in auto-moderation because I used a generic word that describes a glossy newsstand publication, and that word happens to begin with a flagged four letters, so trying again]
I tried to date the newsstand copy of “Life,” since it was published weekly, but the cover is too distorted to match actual issues. However, the edition of Harper’s Bazaar is definitely from April, 1963.
That “Saab story” article uses a word I’ve seen a lot in old car ads: “roadability”. What the hell does that even mean? Who says “oh yeah, this car is super roadable”
Maybe it was the Fahrvergnügen of it’s day.
It’s roaded to the road.
It basically means the car is suitable for long distance driving with a degree of comfort and reduced exhaustion. It’s not tiringly loud, twitchy, or harsh (by standards of the day) as many (non US) cars were.
I see how that makes sense, although I’ve most often seen the word “roadability” in ads for big American cars. I guess that was to set them apart from their imported competition, i.e. “this car is uniquely designed for the demands of American driving, unlike those foreign cars”, or something like that?
Or even smaller or older domestic cars. In the US, the interstate was a big deal and people wanted to use them to drive all over, often with their families. Something that was relatively quiet and smooth, powered easily along like a freight train on abundant low end torque at fairly low rpm, absorbed road imperfections, and tracked straight with minimal effort was a lot more appealing than the opposite attributes. (In the early days of post war imports, importers worked with large numbers of manufacturers and sold them all under one roof because, for the most part, European cars just did not meet what many people were looking for except as occasional fun drivers, like sports cars, and US cars were cheaper to buy and run.) At the time of this ad in Europe, the postwar economy was improving after years of rebuilding and austerity measures where people drove tiny penalty boxes to get around (nicer cars were mostly for export to the US), so something like a Saab 96 was probably like a Cadillac to people who might be used to an ancient jalopy, tiny-displacement tax-beater shoebox, or even microcars. The time of this Saab ad was also the early part of the era of the GT—powerful and more luxurious sporting cars meant more for intercontinental road-tripping than a race track (they still were weighted more for maneuverability as European roads were often built on old routes with far more curves and had older cities of tight roads that were not designed around cars)—so Europe was going a similar route in regards to road tripping, plus this was when commercial aviation was expensive with far fewer destinations in either continent, so that wasn’t a good option yet. One of the reasons I find transportation history so interesting is how entwined it is with all history.
“Roadability” equals “handling” including all the gray area of both terms.
Gawd to walk up to a newsstand and buy the latest Mad Magazine, Cracked and CARtoons. Bliss!
I had a ’73 96 that I actually did something similar with. The wood floor in the trunk was rotted out so I needed to make a new one. One trip to the hardware store where they ripped it just narrow enough that I could shove it in the trunk (and leave the trunk open) and I was soon on my way home.
This appears to be legal or near legal in Europe. A car can be 12 meters long, and stuff hanging out more than 1 meter (39 Trump dicks in imperial ) from the back, has to be marked with something reflective.
Like the shiny chrome reflective coat hangers everybody in Europe uses, right?
This is the official model:
https://www.pervaco.no/media/catalog/product/cache/9d6ece79d481706b1075536e136bcfb6/0/0/00983_1_1.jpg
But you will often see a high visibility vest stripped to the end instead.
After I started reading MAD as a kid, I discovered a flea market where a guy was selling old ones from the 60’s. I bought stacks of them for pennies on the dollar, but it’s amazing how topical much of the humor was. A lot of the Viet Nam and Hippie stuff went right over my ’70s head.
I still have a large collection of the MAD paperback books that I bought in the 80s at a used coin/stamp shop in town for like maybe 5 bucks. So much hippie humor.
This exhibit might help put some things into perspective all these years later:
https://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/art/exhibitions/what-me-worry-the-art-and-humor-of-mad-magazine/
About the Auto Age piece, I’m sure there’s a leg of type below the car that’s the real start of the article. But taking what we can see there, I like the idea of “a small family who had supplied Sweden with light bombers and jet fighters.”
I had an uncle who was a navigator during the war in a SAAB B-17, a single engine reconnaissance aircraft. It used an Italian engine that was notorious for leaking exhaust into the cockpit.
One day after a particularly long patrol their wingman succumbed to the fumes and passed out. His SAAB drifted into my uncle’s and sliced through the cockpit killing the pilot. My uncle managed to get out and hit the silk barely 75m above the ground, drifting into a tree a few meters from a set of power transmission lines. For that he was awarded membership into the caterpillar club from the American manufacturer of the parachutes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_Club
Anyway the pilot who passed out managed to get his plane under control and radioed in what had happened. In all the confusion however he reported that it was my uncle who had been killed. So when my uncle finally returned to base he found his squadron, following the tradition of the Swedish air force, toasting his memory on his last paycheck.
Look at it this way – if Sweden did have pickup trucks everywhere, there would have been no need for IKEA to sell self-assembly furniture.
I will never say no to Saab content. Never!
It was a big deal with the posibility to have stuff sticking out of the rear (properly marked even), as the older Saab sedans didnt have rear hatches.
Love the 2 stroke 96! Sounds like a weedeater
“so if you’re looking for something more coherent”
We’re at the Autopian. We know what we’re here for.
StockholmTrollhattan syndrome.