Rare in 1960 and incredibly rare today, this 1960 Saab 93F is reportedly one of only around 600 made in its final year of production. We don’t know exactly how many are left but if you’re a Saab fan(atic) and are looking for an ambitious but very doable project, this one is listed here on eBay in Anderson, Indiana. There is a suggested opening bid price of $4,000, and even then the reserve won’t be met.
The Saab 93 was made from 1956 to 1960 and it came after the – yes – Saab 92. The first 93 models, the 93B, came with rear-hinged doors and, according to the Saab Museum, it gave the company a chance to use up a lot of their stock of old parts before the introduction of the new Saab 96. If there are any serious Saab fans or collectors out there, I would imagine that they’re salivating, trying to figure out how to make this deal work. How to get this car, how to get it home, how to restore it, how to hide it from your spouse – the usual situation, we’ve all been there.
It has a trunk! It’s much easier to load your luggage with a trunk lid available, says Cap’n Obvious. An odd fun fact is that GM reportedly came out with a top-ten list of its favorite cars in 2008, and topping the list was a Saab 92. As in, coming in before the Corvette, Cadillac V16, the tri-five Chevys, the GTO, etc. I would have to agree,
The interior is a blank slate but that doesn’t mean that the next owner will put a set of Pinto bucket seats in there, hopefully. The seller has several photos of parts that are included and there may be one showing the bottom of a seat but I can’t tell. They do say that the front floor was cut out and that’s just a piece of sheet metal lying on the floor in the photo above. There will be tons of work to do on this car, but it’ll be worth it when (not if, when) you take first place at a car show.
There is no V4 here, this is Saab’s famous 748-cc two-stroke triple, which had 33 horsepower and the seller says that this one runs and the car moves under its own power. They have extra engines and all kinds of parts that go with the sale. Have any of you owned an early Saab like this 93F?
Grandpa had a dark green 2stoke also a red v4 2stroke sounded like a lawnmower
I think the V4 was a four stroke, Sourced from Ford in Europe.
Grew up in small town with Saab dealer, I remember as a kid an old Saab with the suicide doors sitting behind a building town. A rare sight in the 70’s, not many left today.
Yes, the v4 was a 4 stroke. It was the 3 cylinder that was affectionately known as the “corn popper “.
This would be a worthy candidate for a full on restoration if I only had the space
I live about 30 minutes West of Anderson, Indiana. Anderson, back in the day, was a huge GM/Union City….no fur’en cars, or non GM, without severe peer pressure. The only remnants of GM/UAW are some retirees. Very unique/well hidden SAAB.
As we used to say years ago, “look!, there goes a Slaab” lol.
I’m not getting all the mention of GM here, they didn’t own Saab back then, did they? I know they did in more recent years, as GM had a hard time unloading Saab during their bailout, they were almost dissolved, but some outfit bought’em up, can’t remember who. Ugly cars, but to each his own, can’t imagine where you’d find parts for one.
You´re right, GM owned Saab for a period 1990-2010.GM sold to Spyker, the Dutch suercar company, but that ended in bankruptcy (and a whiff of scandal?) 2 years later. The assets went to an EV company in Sweden called NEVS which still exists in some form.
I don´t find Saabs ugly. If yiou ignore the 2 stroke engine, you are looking at a 1950s prototype of nearly every European small car built since 1970.
NEVS was a Chinese company that owns the rights to the SAAB name , but not the Scania line of trucks ,which is still Swedish owned . NEVS built less than 400 SAABs for the Chinese market, in 2014 , and now NEVS as a company is defunct
Hope somebody saves her.
Back in the late 60’s I put my 63 Saab 96 on its roof one night chasing around with some buddies on PA back roads, verifying the value of the built in roll cage body design. My 96’s body wasn’t repairable, but the drive train was unharmed. I actually rolled it back on its wheels that night and drove it home. What to do??
A friend of my father’s knew a guy with a black 58 Saab 93 with a seized engine. I bought the 93 for small money and swapped the 96’s 850cc 3cyl/2cycle engine drive train into the 93. This was the first time I did more than replacing a muffler on a car. Necessity and no money are big motivators. Over the 60 years since, I’ve owned and worked on lots of cars.
The 93 was great fun. The exhaust note and spinning the front tires when pulling out at an intersection, always got looks from the guys with the 57 Chevys. There were no front wheel drive cars at that time.
I’ve also owned a 59 95 wagon and multiple V4 96s.
I hope someone restores this special piece of automotive history.
Simple swap for a two stroke. We could swap out a two stroke motor on a SAAB in less than an hour. Add about 45 minutes if we did the transmission too. The trick tool needed was either a lot of 3/8″ extensions and a universal joint or a 1/2″ wrench cut in half to get the lower starter motor bolt out. If you were lucky, they still had the slotted bolt in place and a very long screwdriver would get it out.
I have 4 words for you, Ha ya bus a…
Yuk.
Wish I had the room and the money. This would really turn heads at Cars and Coffee. Bet it gets Prius-like mileage!
These cars bring back memories. Bad Ones! I worked in a Mobil station when I was in high school. It got pretty dam cold in the NE in January. A regular patron with a Saab like this one would hand me a quart of oil left in the car to put in the gas tank during the fill up. It took forever at 30 degrees to pour 1 quart of oil into the gas tank. I say 10% of the oil ran down the quarter panel.
I hated Saabs from that day on.
Had several of these as a kid , fun and great on snow or ice , my last one was a 1967 96 4 speed 3 cyl oil injected , and yes you could change out an engine in less than a hour , and rebuild one for about $50 , great little cars
Ha, these are very rare! I have a 93B in black like this one and a red 1960 93F. These are seldom seen and really fun once sorted! Anyone interested in old SAABs should check out the Vintage Saab Club of North America, google it!
Someone please do a LS Swap.
What does it take to get you clowns out of the LS mindset ??
There’s no hope for clowns
Truly. It”ll buff out, LS, etc. Tired, boring, unimaginative. Find some new stupid cliche.
Poo poo.
As a kid, someone owned one in my neighborhood, halfway down a hill. He would back out of the side load garage and inch forward until he could see it was clear in both directions. He would then floor it in first and attack that hill at redline, going putt, putt, putt by the top. As a teenager, my friend, who attracted weird vehicles had one with a motorized key on the back so it looked like a windup toy going down the road. As for weird, he later had a 1966 C10 pickup with a 292 straight 6 and lakes pipes, sans mufflers.
Yeah growing up in my neighborhood somebody had the two stroke. Smelled and sounded like my Dad’s lawnmower. Lol. If I remember correctly he had to add the oil to a tank as I vaguely remember him showing my Dad and me under the hood. Saw one of these at a local car show last summer. Got a lot of attention including mine. Hope this old relic gets restored.
My dad bought a used Saab with the 3 cylinder 2 cycle engine. Not sure of the year. My brother started to drive in ’67 and one time while getting gas, he handed the gas jockey a can of antifreeze to put into the tank thinking it was a can of oil. It ran long enough to make it home, about a mile, but stunk and ran rough.
My dad figured it pretty quick and had it towed to the same gas station to drain the gas tank. No damage done.
Ring-a-ding ding
Some one stole queen Elizabeth’s car!!!!
I bought a 1960 93F like this one in 1967 from a New Jersey MG dealer’s used car lot for $100. It was in very good condition, except for some fairly minor engine work which was easily fixed. Had it for a little over 2 years during which time I had the engine out of it 13 times. (Including twice in one day.) I could pull the little 2-stroke engine out by hand in about 20 minutes. I carried a spare engine in the trunk along with tools and a couple of gallons of water. Came in handy one day on a city street – just got it to the curb and proceeded to switch engines, then drove away. Traded it in on a new ’69 BMW 2002 after graduating college.
I think I owned this car at one point. We bought it ( or similar) in 72/3. We bought all the inventory from Continental imports in Indianapolis when they closed. We stored it in a barn north of town, and the farmer never figured we would come back for it. 50!years later, and I’m still working on these old Saabs.
I had the later Saab 96’s. 1st a 3 cylinder 2 stroke and then a V4 model. I always liked the “free wheel” feature. I’ve had a Sonnett, a 96 wagon and even a couple of GM Saabs including a 2008 9-3 Aero.
The “free wheel” feature was to protect the engine. With the throttle closed there was very little gas and oil going into the engine. Pushing the engine to a higher speed with the car’s momentum would cause damage.
I saved one of these….sort of. In the mid 1980s some professor from nearby Conn College came into our auto salvage yard with an well known artist . They told me they were looking to get a car for the artist to make an abstract sculpture out of it. Steel was pretty cheap back then, and we said we would donate one. The artist then tells me he wants something exotic, like a Ferrari , to which I tell him This is Connecticut and you’re not going to find a junk Ferrari anywhere, and so we both walked through the yard looking around. At that point I remembered one of these (or this body style) had just been towed in recently , and I brought him over to it- Well, he thought it was great, and we loaded it on the hauler and dropped it off at the school. Years later I found out the guys name was Dustin Schuler, the guy that made the sculpture of the Caddy with a gigantic nail through it and many other car artworks. That white Saab I donated is now hanging on a wall in California, its was part of his “car pelt” projects , where he would skin a car , and lay to the body flat like a bearskin rug. You can see it online . Keep in mind that the car would have long been crushed as nobody local had one, and in the pre internet days , a car like that wasn’t going to stay in the yard very long.
Auction update: this one had no bids at the seller’s opening price of $4,000, unfortunately. I hope it ends up being restored to original spec someday.