Born from jets, this little brand refuses to die.

It’s always been pretty quirky. Most automobiles are made in Detroit, Stuttgart or Japan; this one came from…Trollhattan? On the outside, it was all round and puffed up, which some folks found eccentric but others found just plain ugly. Instead of an uncomfortable hump down the middle of the back floor, this car offered the middle passenger equal legroom. How’d they do that?  With FRONT wheel drive! Weird!! There were curious safety features like a “roll cage” and “diagonal braking.” There was a hole that opened in the roof. Look at this, the whole back seat folds down flat.  And – what’s that? – my butt’s getting hot!  Heated seats? No way!  And what’s this funny gauge that’s sort of bolted onto the dashboard that say’s “Turbo”? And where the heck is the ignition??

All these idiosyncrasies spring from the brand’s origins; the first models were built on an airplane assembly line.  In 1949, the Swedish Airplane Corporation created the “92,” a two-cylinder automobile which featured cockpit-style seating and instrumentation.  The three-cylinder “93” arrived in 1955, followed by a wagon, the “95,” in 1959.  Also in the 50’s came the “94,” a sporty version which may be the funkiest car ever built and which came to be known as the “Sonnet.”  (Don’t ask, just look that one up.)  In 1969, the company merged with Scania Vehicle and launched the “99,” which featured a “combi coupe” body design which would come to define the brand.  This would in turn give birth to the “900” in 1978, which would eventually sell over 1 million vehicles.  At every step in this evolution, the brand remained defiantly iconoclastic, which won it the undying love its customers, but which also severely limited its appeal.

And then.  In 1989 the company foolishly aligned with General Motors, giving GM a 50% stake in the company.  This resulted in a new, more mainstream “900” in 1994 that increased sales but eroded the brand’s reputation for innovation and quality.  In 1997, on the 50^th anniversary of the brand, GM jettisoned the car’s classic styling and launched new sedan models built on Cadillac frames, and an SUV that looked like the Chevy that it was.  This led to a decade of brand erosion, the failed launch of numerous new designs, the movement of manufacturing to an old Opel plant in Germany, and then, inevitably, complete failure.  GM tried to sell the brand to seemingly every car company in the world, and then unloaded it to Spyker, a Dutch sports car manufacturer, in 2010.  But Spyker couldn’t save it either, and threw it into bankruptcy in 2011.

And just like that, Saab, the oddly awesome car created by airplane engineers, was dead.

Ah, but don’t underestimate the power of the bizarre.  You want kooky?  Try this:  a Japanese-Chinese joint venture called National Electric Vehicle Sweden.  Over the past two years, the assets of Saab were reorganized and the company given a reboot.  This week, something funny happened at that old plant in Trollhattan, Sweden.  On Monday, December 1, new Saabs started rolling off the line for the first time in years.  These first cars are throwbacks, gasoline powered models available only to a limited number of customers in Sweden.

But next will come an electric model, which will be built in Sweden, fitted out with battery technology in Japan, and then sold in China.  The design is based on a concept car first presented in 2011, which beat competitors from brands like Alfa-Romeo and Jaguar.  It integrates many traditional design elements, and features gull-wing doors reminiscent of a, um, fighter jet.

And what’s the name of this potential savior of the brand?  The Saab Phoenix.

The story isn’t finished.  Innovation and idiosyncrasy live on. The world’s strangest car just might fly again.