Born from Jets and Jewel Thieves, the Saab 900 Turbo 16S Is Still Special

If you have ever scratched your head and pondered the appeal of the Saab 900 Turbo 16S, a car that turned 40 at the end of last year, let me tell you a story. And before you scoff and think it an apocryphal tale, I can assure you it’s not hearsay. The car in question belonged to my dad.

It’s the early 1990s, and a gray 900 Turbo 16S drives into the car park of a factory in the northern England city of Newcastle. Its driver, my dad, and passenger, his colleague, park up, collect their briefcases and bits and pieces, lock the car and walk to the reception area, where they sign in. As they’re waiting for their client to collect them, dad’s colleague asks, “Is that your car driving out of the car park?”

Sure enough, it was his car. A couple of weeks later, the police contact my dad to say the Saab had been recovered, in something of a sorry state. It had been stolen to order, at a time when ram-raiding was all the rage among the criminal fraternity. But why choose it in the first place? 

Well, it was the strongest hatchback known to man, with a cavernous boot that made it the perfect battering ram for a reverse smash-and-grab. As a Turbo 16S, it would comfortably outrun any police patrol car of the time. And being built on an old platform that was evolved from the 99, it was narrow—crucially, narrow enough to squeeze between the anti-ram bollards that jewelry shop owners had fitted in front of their property.

In a matter of seconds, the 16S had demolished the shop front, the hatchback had been flung open, and a couple of likely lads had gathered up everything they could lay their hands on. The Saab was wheel-spinning the hell out of there before the dust had settled.

I still remember, as a teenager, going to retrieve Dad’s belongings from the car and searching high and low for any dropped diamond earrings or Rolex watches, but presumably the police had beaten me to it and packed anything away as potential evidence. The irony is, those same qualities that made the 16S so attractive to the ram-raiders are what made this particular Saab so appealing to my dad. 

He owned four examples of the 16S, all from new. The first I remember best—B44 VKK, are you still out there?—as it was the shock of the new. Before this, he’d owned a BMW 528i (E28) and before that a second-hand Porsche 911 (G-Series), but as his packaging consultancy business grew, he chose to keep a low profile and trade into something altogether more stealthy. And yes, really, the 16S was stealthy. Saabs were largely an unknown quantity among the wider British public, selling in modest numbers and being viewed as a quirky oddity from the depths of Scandinavia that always seemed to have their sidelights on in the daytime …

Evolution of the Species

Saab’s turbo-tastic heritage begins with the 99 Turbo, launched in 1978. It came at the very end of the 99’s lifetime; its successor, the 900, was also launched in 1978, while the following year the 900 Turbo arrived. BMW and Porsche had experimented with forced induction before Saab, namely with the 2002 Turbo and 911 (930) Turbo, respectively, but it was Saab that brought it to the mass market, and turbocharging would go on to become baked into the company’s DNA.

For that, we have Per Gillbrand to thank. After the company decided to abandon fitting Triumph’s V-8 engine to its 99, as it sought more performance for influential markets such as America, Gillbrand set to work on turbocharging. He reasoned, “All engines have an oil pump, a fuel pump, and a water pump. So why not an air pump, which is all a turbo really is? I think it’s odd that all engines don’t have one.” 

But it was in 1980 that an aspiring car designer would sew the seed for what would become something of a cult car and unquestionably Saab’s most sought-after model to date, the 900 Turbo 16S. Geoff Wardle, a Brit, had graduated in mechanical engineering and then from the Royal College of Art’s Vehicle Design Master program. That year, Wardle saw an ad in Car magazine: Saab was hiring designers. He went for an interview with chief designer, Björn Envall, and the rest is history.

Upon his arrival in snowy Trollhättan at the end of 1980, Wardle was given his first brief: “Björn asked me to come up with some facelift ideas for the 900 three-door while he took a business trip to the U.S.,” Wardle says in Matt Searle’s history of the 900, Icon.

“I think he was expecting a few small changes—spray the door handles silver or add a rubbing strip of something!” What Wardle proposed was a makeover that, he says, addressed the 900’s design shortcomings. “The 900 almost looked like it had a boat-like hull shape to it around the sills, which troubled me. It didn’t look like it was planted on the road like a fast turbocharged car should be.”

Wardle’s proposal was for a body kit and “aero” alloy wheels that would not only look the part but also significantly improve the 900’s ability to smoothly pass through the air, by reducing the drag coefficient from 0.41 to 0.38 Cd—a figure measured in the wind tunnel at Britain’s Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA). The side skirts were made from reinforced reaction injection-molded polyurethane, with 15 percent fiberglass as the reinforcement, and they were attached to extruded aluminum rails that were screwed into the bodywork. Initially, Wardle envisaged the bodykit being silver, and the rear wing being of a bridge-type, but the production cars’ panels ended up with a satin anthracite grey finish while the wing affixed flush to the boot.

A Boost for the Turbo

Saabs’s marketing department was skeptical that this “Aero” model, as it had been christened, would take off, but an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the public and press alike convinced them otherwise. With the project gaining internal support, it was time to work on the mechanical muscle. 

It seemed like the perfect model to fit the new 16-valve, turbocharged “H-type” four-cylinder engine, the B202L, a double-overhead-cam unit (hence the DOHC badging) which would go on to do duties in the new-fangled 9000, the flagship Saab that was built around a platform shared with the Alfa Romeo 164, Fiat Croma and Lancia Thema.

It featured a 16-valve cylinder head for better breathing compared with the 8-valve version, a Garrett AiResearch T3 turbocharger, and an intercooler, which cooled the air from the turbo from around 250 degrees Fahrenheit to 140 degrees, helping make the air more dense and raise output to 175 hp at 5300 rpm, with torque up to 201 Ib ft at 3000 rpm—increases of 30 hp and 28 Ib ft. (The U.S. version, called 900 Turbo SPG, for Special Performance Group, had to make do with 165 hp.) The car also featured Saab’s clever box of tricks called APC, Automatic Performance Control. This system prevented premature detonation of the fuel and adjusted the turbo’s boost pressure depending on the octane of fuel being used.

Relatively few chassis changes were made. Those sensible Swedes figured that if the recipe worked, stick with it. So the only change was the addition of front and rear antiroll bars, with a slight softening of the rear dampers.

After the car magazines got their hands on Saab’s new 16S and strapped on the Correvit testing equipment, the performance numbers made for impressive reading. Around the banked high-speed circuit at MIRA, Motor magazine achieved a top speed of 134 mph, 0–60 mph in 8.6 seconds (against Saab’s claimed 130 mph and 8.2 seconds), and 0–100 mph in 22.9 seconds. But of greater relevance to everyday driving was the in-gear acceleration: 50 to 70 mph in fourth gear took 5.8 seconds, and 60 to 80 mph in fifth gear took 8.0 seconds, helped partly by the short gearing and the car’s comparatively light, 2780-pound curb weight.

Dad certainly made the most of the performance on offer. I have a vivid memory of us returning from a family holiday in France, and he had a bit of a tangle with a Mercedes 500SEL and Renault 5 GT Turbo, the three cars running in a high-speed train at 130 mph for what seemed like an eternity as we streaked across the French autoroutes. I can still see the little, light Renault puffing smoke in protest at being flogged so mercilessly to keep up with the more powerful cars.

The Enduring Appeal of a 900 Turbo 16S

The 900 Turbo 16S was launched at the British International Motor Show in October 1984. This would be the first public viewing of the new flagship of the 900 range, and it came weeks after the first road tests of the £14,090 ($17,000 at the time) model began appearing in car magazines. For Paul Davies, a psychologist from Witney, in Oxfordshire, the childhood memories of a neighbor’s Saab 900 Turbo Ruby (the final 150 sold in the U.K. were dubbed “Ruby Edition)) would eventually steer him to take ownership of his early, square-bumper 900 Turbo 16S—known in Saab circles as the “flat nose”—after a 900i expired on him.

“It smelt lovely, a combination of petrol and leather!” he says of his neighbor’s car. “There were things that amazed me, like the pneumatic air vents that went ‘whooosh’, but more than anything it was that look—that shape—that did it for me.” Without the bodykit of the 16S, says Davies, the 900 Turbo looked like “a boat out of water.”

Having bought his 16S three years ago, after a lengthy restoration by a specialist, Davies tries to use it as much as possible, only keeping it off the road in the winter when the gritters have been spraying salt. The smell reminds Davies of being young, and he says it has a “grown up feeling” even though all cars are driven by adults. “It’s that sensible Swedishness, I suppose,” he says.

Looking around his car, the memories come flooding back. The perfectly formed Aero alloy wheels are almost framed by the black plastic cladding, the “Turbo” badges sit just above the ends of the clamshell, forward-hinged bonnet, and the rear spoiler is as squidgy to the touch as it ever was. Davies’ car even has the original tailpipe, a rarity as most have been replaced with modern aftermarket systems.

Open the doors and the 900’s quirks—low, narrow sills to make it easy to get in and out of the cabin; the wraparound windscreen; ignition between the front seats—are all eminently logical. The fantastically comfortable seats that all owners used to swear by still feel as though they support in all the right places, and that heady smell of leather is still there. The simple switchgear remains at the driver’s fingertips when their hands are on the steering wheel. 

I climb into the back seats and more memories come flooding back: opening the hinged back windows to better hear that exhaust note; peering over the righthand side of the driver’s seat to see the turbo’s boost gauge needle flicking into the red; the recess in the roof lining to allow for more headroom; and behind me, the big boot—so big a double mattress would fit with the seats folded, a quirk insisted upon by Stig Norling, head of development of the 900 and an avid camping enthusiast.

When Davies and I take to the road, the sound and rush of the turbo are all the more endearing than they were back in the ’80s. The 16S steers and handles surprisingly well. Road tests of the time praised the handling for its absence of torque steer and wheel spin, high levels of grip, powerful brakes, and planted stance at high speeds. Sure, after four decades of turbo development throughout the car industry, this turbo doesn’t feel all that fast, and the boost only comes on strong as the rev counter homes in on 3000 rpm, but back in the day its performance was more than a match for a BMW 325i or 528i, a Volvo 240 Turbo, the Mercedes 190E, and even an early non-turbo Porsche 944.

Saab’s ad agency played on the company’s connection to the aircraft division to promote a sense of performance mixed with innovation and safety. The year before the 16S made its debut, director Tony Scott, younger brother of Ridley Scott, shot such a moody ad of a Saab 37 Viggen fighter jet racing a 900 Turbo that it landed him the gig to direct Top Gun. In 1988, the U.K. ad agency followed this up with a film of the 16S seemingly launching off a cliff and transforming into a Saab fighter jet.

Two of my dad’s Saabs suffered gearbox failure, a known weak point of the 900 Turbos. But other than that, they were seriously tough things and supremely comfortable (if a touch noisy) over long distance drives, as he averaged about 20,000 miles a year.

The Turbo 16S “flat nose” evolved into the face-lifted “slant nose” in 1986, a stylistic makeover that better integrated Wardle’s body kit with new front and rear bumpers. As well as the most popular three-door hatchback body, other Turbo 16S body styles emerged over the years, including a rare notchback two-door sedan (just 252 built) that arrived in 1988 and was only ever sold in the U.K., and the ice-cool convertible that dropped its top in 1990. Both were farmed out to Valmet, which built them in Finland. 

With something of a cult following, you may not be surprised to learn that values of the 16S have been on the rise for some time. Davies bought his car restored for £15,000 (about $20K) and tells me that another restored car about to be delivered to a new owner went for twice that.

Current pricing in the U.S. for Saab 900 Turbo SPGs pegs a #3 (good) car at $26,600, with #2 (excellent) examples just shy of $38,000. Five years ago, values were roughly half that, so these great-looking, great-driving machines are certainly on the up. A standard 16-valve 900 Turbo, by comparison, costs about $10,000 in #3 shape and $14,000 in #2 condition.

In its own way, the 900 Turbo 16S remains as much a fashion statement of the 1980s and ’90s as a Ferrari Testarossa or Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16 Evolution II. Its unusual form was dictated by function, while its development of Saab’s turbocharging technology was a prediction of the way engineering across the wider motor industry would go.

When it was current, drivers were attracted to the 16S by the advertising that suggested it would turn you into a jet fighter pilot. Today, the car appeals to a new demographic of owners—more often than not, Gen Xers or millennials. People like Paul Davies, for whom the ’80s aesthetics, old-school turbo rush, and sensible Swedishness make for an irresistible, unconventional car. A sanctuary, if you like, from the ordinary.