Despite Saab's setbacks refuses Oscar Karlsson abandon marque. He is only 16 years old, but already the owner of five Saabs!
- There is something special about Saab. The cars have a soul and I like that.
The NWT.se article
Love for Saab is deeply rooted among the Swedish people. We love the little automaker that for so long has contributed with their innovative technologies and their slightly different design.
Oscar Karlsson from Torsby really love the cars from Trollhättan.
- Yes, I was only twelve when I got a Saab 9000 by my Dad. The car had been standing because of a little problem with the engine. It was of course nice to get a car and it was so my interest in Saab began, says 16-year-old Oscar.
Now owns Oscar Karlsson another and very special 9000 that he found at a workshop in Torsby a couple of years ago. There is a Saab 9000 Turbo Sport T16 from 1992.
- It is the precursor to the Aero and the car has a special engine and was produced only in 180 cars.Now there are only about 50 cars left, I have heard. I have, changed the clutch and brakes on it and a few years ago I got a photo of a similar car by Jan-Ake Jonsson, who was then president of Saab, which congratulated me as the owner.
It was something that increased interest in Trollhättan pride. An entire cabinet in the house in Torsby is now full of Saab stuff and that includes everything from old automotive magazines to manuals for the latest models.




Got hold of the first owner- There is something special about Saab. The cars have a soul and I like that and they are very comfortable to ride in. Meanwhile, Saab has always been ahead of its time with technology. I really hope that production will continue despite the bankruptcy.
Although Oscar still has a couple years away from taking driving license, he has not been satisfied with one car.
- Two years ago I found a green V4 96: a 1973 on the internet.i bought it in Borlange, but the car was purchased new by an older man in Lidingö that I got hold of the phone.We talked a bit and then turned out that we have a birthday the same day, on April 22! He thought it was very funny that the car is still rolling.

9220 th Saab
A real object is Oscar's oldest car, a Saab 92B Deluxe in 1954.
- It's a lot to do with. Only the 9220 th Saab since the production start and I know anyone who has owned it. The 92 I have purchased from my grandfather's brother Kjell Karlsson, who had the car since the early 1970s. The goal is to have it ready when I take the student a few years.
The car collection includes a 1997 900 Turbo, which serves as a reservdelsbil and a Saab 900 2.3 in 1996 to serve as normal car when Oscar Karlsson takes license in a couple of years. There is obviously something he longs very much for.








The NWT.se article

Well I got my first one at 15 (c900 1989) and the next one at 16. I worked my arse off on both but then ran out of time and money. Everybody hated me in school and college so they were pretty much my only friends. Pretty pathetic, no?

My '91 c900 N/A sedan is basically my parents, but I do a lot of the work and take care of it and call it mine. They like that I have an interest in SAABs and they are both Saab fans, but not as big as me. Everyone thinks it's a stupid ugly and slow car at my highschool. I wonder when you get your license in Sweden?! I've had mine for 7 months, and I'm 16. But I am in Maine so yeah. Haha very cool that this kid is collecting!!!

Hey that has described most of my Saabs so watch what you say.

The Saab has got a rally heritage if anything at all. You do not need to be sleek and fast to win a rally. You do need to have a "get-er-done" quality.

Can you see the roll bar or "cage" that allowed Eric "On The Roof" Carlsson to create the legend? No but it is in there. An MG was cute and girls loved them but on a rough back road, we used to have a saying that the route was "Triumph Proof or MG Proof" meaning that you were much better off in a car with a bit of ground clearence. Occasionally on a rally you had to go through a shallow but legal stream crossing out in the hills by Scranton PA. That was not going to happen in an MG.

If you want to win the girls part with the $$ for an E-Jag. If you want guy pals just get a pick-em-up and every time one of your buds wimmens sees a "free piano" in the paper your phone will be ringing away.

Funny, when I bought my first Saab I also had an MGB Limited. It was black on black and real nice looking. So one of my pals wives ... her best friend is suddenly all over me so I ask her out. When I go to pick her up, I am feeling like a million bucks driving my new Saab 900 and the minute she gets in the car she starts ..... "where is that, that other thing?" .... "you know, where is the black thing" now I have to start goofing on her and say stuff like "Oh, Jefferson, I never thought to call him to see if he wanted to double" ... hell she doesn't even know what an MG is aside from getting her hair messed up if I put the top down. Our first and last date.

When I was getting my license I asked my "Old Man" about getting a car. I had been working in a hot dog and burger flipping joint for about a year so I did have some cash saved. He was a man of few words and not one to be argued with so when I got .. "No" followed by "because I said so" I knew that the less said the better. That found me a few days later down at the "Sally" or Salvation Army, where one of the residents reluctantly parted with his 1951 Ford Crown Victoria 2 door hardtop with a 239 cubic inch flathead V-8 coupled to an automatic transmission. My real cool car back then would have been a Jag 140 or something like a TR-3 but what the heck? The next few days found me in the scrap yard behind the auto body where I also did "gopher" work and they allowed my to convert my 1951 into a 1949 by popping off most of the chrome and fitting up the "bullet" front end. It did not take long for our local PD to get around to talking to the next town (3 blocks) over where I "stashed" my car. It seems that when a car is titled but not insured the DMV even back in those days would place a courtesy call and when my car showed up with only half of the proper credentials, I was had. The plates that I "procured" from a wreck and lack of insurance, all the little things saved me from a day in a holding cell, simply because Mom would have "killed him" if he put his own kid in a cell. So I was allowed to buy a 1961 Tempest. But he held firm when I did a "horse trade" of my 4 cylinder Tempest for a Jag XK-140 since the speedo was pretty high and he even convinced Mom that the asphalt and I would merge into a red smear at those speeds. Convincing him to allow me to get a Corvair was easy. Mom had one and the fact it was a turbo, he didn't pick up on, or got tired of the battle. The best and perhaps the most important thing here is that by doing your own wrenching, you get to know the car on a very personal basis, you will see down into the car's soul and when things go wrong it will be like second nature. You will never be slaved to mechs for the rest of your life. And when and if (they will) try to sling crap at you, you will know when to pack and run. You are a lucky guy.

Interesting observations. Modern teens (majority) don't know s**t about s**t and the last thing they are going to find attractive is a Saab 900.
The classic saab models are not ugly by any means. Especially the sedan.
But care not, Sean Hughes, for you are a good man to have chosen this as your first car.
Going back to the high school periods, I did (inevitably) do some pretty irresponsible things with both cars. Here in Colorado the one thing that you never run out of is twisty high altitude roads.

Hey show us some pictures of you 91 sedan!