I had been gifted with my first boombox during Christmas of 1984. It could be described more accurately as just a portable radio, as it wasn’t large or complex, but it was the first major item from the electronics department that I had owned all by myself, and I loved that thing. It had a silver-colored casing, and the single cassette deck door was made of tinted, smoke-colored plastic. (Why did tinted glass or plastic connote high-tech back then? It just did.)
My Fisher-Price turntable was shared with my younger brother, but this new boombox (as everyone in my family kept referring to it) was exclusively the property of Joe Dennis. I would sometimes fall asleep with it playing softly, and I’d awaken at night when nature called to the faint sounds of the music and the late-night DJ. This felt like a comforting connection to my city.
When that radio was about a year old, musician Morris Day, Prince associate and former member of The Time, had released his solo debut album, Color of Success, with the title track receiving lots of airplay on Flint’s urban contemporary radio station, WDZZ 92.7 FM. Back then, the idea of success having a color (green) was a novel metaphor for me, and I thought the song was as clever as it was danceable. This was at a time in the ’80s when Yuppie (and Buppie) culture was at the forefront of the national mindset. Green means go. Certain cars and specific models became emblematic of young, upwardly-mobile urban professionals, with popular examples being the BMW 3-Series and the SAAB 900.
Naturally, when I saw our featured car while on a long walk, the sight of a money-green SAAB convertible was too good not to photograph. The only thing that really surprised me when I was later able to run a license plate search was the model year of this example. To me, this seems like the quintessential Eightiesmobile of the young and affluent, but this convertible was built for the penultimate model year of this generation’s run, with the ’94s (which were actually built in mid-’93) being the last of the line. The truth is that the 900 convertible hadn’t even started production until early 1986, so the ’80s were actually already half over by the time these had started appearing.
The arrival of the 900 convertible might have subconsciously marked the point at which my perception of SAABs had pivoted from that of being just another “weird” import brand to cars that tastemakers aspired toward as their first choice. To wit, our next door neighbors to the house where I had spent the first five years of my life had a SAAB. The Cliftons were a perfectly nice family from what I can recall, but there seemed nothing special about their hatchback, which had an oddly upright windshield that resembled a large forehead, and also little vents on the rear quarter panels. Fast-forwarding from the late-’70s to the mid-’80s, the rebirth of the convertible had breathed new excitement into many car lines. If a K-platform Chrysler LeBaron could be successfully glamorized with a convertible top, so could many other cars.
Trio Motors, as it appeared on Thursday, August 15, 2013. (Flint suburb) Burton, Michigan.
There was no question in my mind that a SAAB convertible could be owned, driven, and appreciated by members of only a certain socioeconomic status, and no one else. This was true especially in Flint. Most middle-class people in my GM car-building hometown who wanted something nice went for a Cutlass Supreme or something like it. A 900 soft-top seemed otherworldly. There was just one SAAB dealership that I had ever seen for years while I was growing up.
Trio Motors was located just outside of Flint city limits in the southern suburb of Burton, and on the same city block as a giant Meijer superstore. Its showroom looked like a converted, metal pole-barn or “Morton building” with a SAAB sign facing the street. It was almost as if Trio Motors had to quietly sneak its imported, Swedish presence into Flint without calling too much attention to itself.
Speaking of Sweden, I had always assumed that all SAABs were built in Trollhättan, but this 900 convertible was built in Nystad, Finland. (I suppose I just hadn’t yet come across that particular Curbside Classic article and read it all the way through.) This car has the 140-horsepower, 2.1-liter B212 four-cylinder engine, teamed with a Borg-Warner three-speed automatic transmission. Convertible production from between early ’86 and the final ones built in the spring of ’93 totaled just under 49,000. Much like Morris Day had sung that he played to win, so it could be said of this generation of SAAB 900, which became a symbol of snaabery of the highest order. Some things do look better in green.
Rogers Park, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, March 2, 2025.
The colour of this 900 drop top is Eucalyptus Green.
It was the launch colour for the new generation 900, which made its debut as a ’94 model and was based on GM Europe’s Opel Vectra/Vauxhall Cavalier platform.
Thanks for identifying the color. I would have never guessed that the replacement for this generation of 900 was related to any Cavalier in any market. (I’m not dissing the Cavalier, BTW.)
While the Mk II Vauxhall Cavalier was a J-car related to the Chevy Cavalier, its replacement the Mk III Cav was unrelated to any Chevy. Its closest US-market cousins on the GM2900 platform were the Saturn L-series, Saab NG 900 (successor to the featured OG 900 model here) which became the first 9-3, and the Saab 9-5.
Ford had a new green like that only available on the Mustang at that time…
My girlfriend at the time considered buying one in convertible or LeBaron convertible but then went with lowest price Japan/Australia/USA Mercury Capri convertible… in red…
Chrysler dealer gave us a good price on LeBaron over the phone but when we got there it was $2K more, so it was out…
Every one of the garden variety Saab 900’s cost the same as a Town Car.
They had their advantages, but mostly it was image.
You touched on this.
As opposed to today’s boy racer $60,000 Kia or a Coca-Cola Cowboy XLT pickup.
As opposed to that era’s coked up King Of The World in a Beemer.
Same price as a Lincoln Town Car does actually sound right to me, without looking it up. Totally different demographic. Completely.
This car looked amazingly up to date for a design that dated back to 1969
I agree. That’s classic Scandinavian design for you, in many applications. Some of the time, I can’t tell IKEA furniture from the ’70s against IKEA furniture from today.
My reaction to the 900 has always been like one of those lenticular holograms that became a fad around the time this car was new: From some angles, I can almost see the appeal, but if I shift my eyes or head a little too much, I lose it again. It had definite strong points, like spring/damping rates that actually provided meaningful body control without beating you to death like the typical domestic H-D suspension, and lots of room for modest dimensions. But then there’s the oddball styling, the balky shift linkage, the various SAAB eccentricities, modest power in the normally aspirated cars …
Convertibles were also scary-expensive. A 1993 900S convertible listed for $32,600 with destination, which was almost $12,000 more than the three-door hatch, and the turbo was $37,500. No thank you!
Great from some angles, slightly wonky from others – that’s my take on the styling, but overall, I like it. And wow – $37,500 in 1993 would be north of $82,000 in 2025. That was a *lot* of money for this car when new.
This car is an S, not a Turbo, so it was $32,600, but that’s still around $72,000 in today’s dollars, but still a lot more than I can get my head around for this car.
You’re exactly on the money, here’s a Monroney from a ’93 Convertible I came across a while back…
$32600 seems like a lot of money to me now. In 1993 it would have been an absolute fortune (and roughly equivalent to what I was earning for work…before taxes).
And of course $32600 would have been before any dealer markup and various non-requested treatments like Rusty Jones.
MPG looks low for a 4 banger in ’93…
Your first boombox, is like your first car, you never forget it. Or all of its qualities and quirks. Early boomboxes were built like tanks. If the sound quality was inferior, by later standards. I remember spending a lot of money on ‘D’ Cell batteries!
SAABs have always been relatively exclusive in Canada. The earlier very practical 99, was probably more common, than the 900. I love the colour on this one.
Though Prince was the star of the Purple Rain soundtrack, I thought ‘Jungle Love’ by Morris Day and the Time, was a genuinely awesome song. Very catchy, and very ’80’s.
Totally remember jamming to “Jungle Love” in elementary school with my classmates and on the bus. Great song! Earlier SAABs (i.e. from the ’70s) did seem more focused or positioned (in my mind, anyway) as more about function than image, but this perception probably has more to do with the clientele who gravitated to these cars in the ’80s than the cars themselves.
Amazing design.
The yellow convertible was a dream come true for many back in the 80s and 90s.
I agree that yellow was an exceptionally good color for the 900 convertible.
Welp, now you’ve got me thinking about SAABs and yuppies. Could be worse.
In the mid-to-late 1980s, I was not so long out of college and of course was the prime age for yuppie vehicular aspirations, so the charms of the 900 series SAABs were not lost on me. Being one of the poor-er members of my generation (having studied social science and nothing related to finance), I could do nothing but read about the sort of car that I might have been buying if only I could snag a job on Wall Street. Within the narrow choice of the truly yuppiemobile – BMW or SAAB – SAAB never quite seemed to catch up. And I somehow feel that I wasn’t alone in that impression. SAAB seemed to have its moment in aspirational pop culture and then faded (likely for lots of reasons). BMW clung on to the very much mainstream.
One thing that probably never helped SAAB was their insistence on selling the cars from dealers that mostly all looked like Trio Motors there in Burton. To this day, I can spot the ex-SAAB dealers around my part of the country by identifying those blue and white corrugated metal buildings. At some point in the 2000s they got nice streetside signs, not that that helped much.
So true about the Saab dealerships – Joe’s Trio Motors picture immediately got me thinking of similar Saab franchises I’ve known over the years. In the image below, the left building is the former Saab dealer building near where I grew up in Suburban Philadelphia, and the one on the right is a former dealer here in Northern Virginia.
Looking at these pictures I can just picture (and smell) the slightly grungy interior, and the salesmen who wore crumpled old suits, in a seeming attempt to identify with the crumpled-suit-wearing professor-types who often bought Saabs. I miss these types of places, but you’re right that many Yuppies would have been repelled by the unpolished atmosphere.
Eric, the building on the left makes me hungry for a Subway footlong. No joke – that looks like a sandwich shop. Thanks for attaching those pictures to help illustrate the point.
I was able to find a picture of that building when it was a Saab dealer – Victor Saab in Roslyn, Pennsylvania. The “showroom” from what I recall could fit one car. At some point, the dealership acquired an adjoining property, which gave them a three-car showroom plus an bigger lot for inventory.
The letters aren’t even spaced evenly. SMH.
Haha, yes, the dealers! In Indianapolis it was on W. 16th street, well west of anything nice but before Speedway. It was surrounded by industrial contractors, with some variety from strip “clubs” and a fabulous bakery that is still worth the long drive from almost everywhere.
I had no idea before reading in the comments that many SAAB dealerships looked as homemade as Trio Motors. I can’t imagine a BMW dealership looking like that.
Jeff, you now have me pondering the qualities, inherent or perceived, that might otherwise have made a BMW seem slightly more elevated than a SAAB of the same generation.
This strikes a chord with me since I once owned a used 1988 Saab 900 hatchback (in the mid 1990s). I loved that car, how it drove, its utility and its quirkiness, but the cost and hassles of maintaining that thing made me realize that buying a European car as a less-than-affluent 25-year-old was absolute madness. Never again.
A few weeks ago I saw green 900 convertible just like this, but unfortunately since I don’t have Joe Dennis-like reflexes, I wasn’t able to photograph it before it drove off. But the driver had his top down, and looked like he was having a great time.
Eric, what sounds like your somewhat costly experience with your ’88 900 sounds like it was a hard lesson to learn. I’m with you, though. At that age and as a car person, I might also have gone with something I really wanted versus a more pedestrian (and reliable) car like an Escort or a Cavalier.
Photographing this particular example requires no reflexes, thankfully, as it was parked by one of my favorite beaches. I had my earbuds in, too, so if someone was asking why I was photographing it, I could conveniently pretend not to hear them.
I graduated college in the mid ’80s and by the end of that decade, many of my classmates were established in high-paying occupations that easily afforded them the means to buy cars such as this Saab convertible. None took the bait, however, many did opt for BMWs. Audis, Volvos, or, in one case, the recently introduced Mercedes-Benz 190E. For whatever reason, Saabs just did not appeal to my friend circle.
Oddly enough, the exception was an acquaintance who was originally from Michigan and whose parents were lifelong GM employees, thus giving him access to the famed GM employee discount. He was a loud proponent of Big Three products and revealing perhaps some status anxiety, bought an Opel-based Saab 9-3 after a owning a series of Oldsmobiles (which even he admitted were kinda lame for a young man to be driving). The Saab proved trouble-prone and was quickly traded for one of the last Olds Bravada SUVs produced before GM shuttered the Olds division.
And yes, I remember most Saab dealers looking very much like Trio Motors. A couple of exceptions were here in the DFW area in the late 90s-early 2000s, where GM paired a couple of Saab franchises with Hummer in spacious, newly-built modern premises. Given the buyer demographics of the two brands, that must have made for some rather uncomfortable showroom encounters!
I also agree that the Hummer-SAAB dealership pairing was not the most intuitive combination I could think of, come to think of it!
Oh, I vividly remember my brief and torrid, but ultimately unrequited love affair with the Saab Turbo. It was long over by the time the convertible came out.
And how I remember the cornucopia of dark green cars in the 90s. I miss them.
This reminds me that in one of the weird John Gardner James Bond novels of the ’80s, Bond drives a 900 Turbo!
I also liked that dark, rich ’90s green. In my mind, I picture most cars with that exterior color having camel-colored interiors.
Joseph here is your lucky day. A 89 900 Turbo convertible with 98K miles and only $10K. Owner is sneaky though by trying to hide the license plate. Yet enough was exposed for me to tell not California plates. So I can’t check the all important history along with registration or lack of. Can you feel the breeze through your hair? You do have hair still?
Or maybe this 1969 95 V4. Look at that back. Paul could literally go camping with that long cargo area.
Nice! I can almost feel the wind on my scalp. I wouldn’t be tempted, though, as I have many other cars ahead of a 900 convertible on my affordable fantasy list. For now.
I remember when the 900’s came out, here in So. Cal. they were the yuppie’s darlings for about four years, then the bottom dropped out of their value, down to $2,000 daily drivers if and when they ran .
-Nate
I’m curious now to think about if and when I have ever seen a 900 that has slid into true beaterdom. I honestly can’t think of one that’s looked in truly bad shape (that was still in regular use). Maybe I just didn’t pay attention.
20 years ago, my next door neighbor in my condo building was my U.S. Congressman. He kept a beater 900 as his “district car” when he was back home. I sold that place 18 years ago. That congressman is still in office, and I bet that Saab is still parked in that condo garage.
The ultimate irony is that a few years after this SAAB was built, the GM-centric folks in “Buy American” Flint would be offered the opportunity to buy a SAAB with a GM Employee discount!
This is absolutely true and a point well-made!
The OG 900 convertible is what drew my burgeoning attention to SAAB; I thought they were exciting and progressive all in one. I loved SAABs attitude about their car design…we don’t give a shit about style. That changed later of course as GM’s talons sunk deeper and deeper.
I’ve had my ’04 Aero convertible for nearly 18 years now. Still get many compliments on its design on the infrequent occasions I pull it out of the garage. The window kid at Canes the other day asked me who made my “Sabe”. Ah, kids today….
Mine was made in Graz, Austria at the then-GM plant.
“Save” pronunciation – that’s a new one for me, but it’s also hard for me to fathom that there’s a whole generation of now-teenagers who wouldn’t be that familiar with SAAB! I think SAABs do have style – just a more simplistic, enduring type of style. I did recently see (within the past week or so) a newer SAAB 9-3 convertible in my neighborhood and I admired its lines.
They pronounce Apache as ‘ a posh ‘…
The two folks I knew who purchased these convertibles new were at two ends of the spectrum. One just had to have the most expensive and unique soft top available and the other needed to get to the slopes in all types of weather. Both were satisfied for the first 3 years of ownership
I like this observation. I can imagine that a Scandinavian-engineered car might have had superior qualities when it came to navigating snow.
I’m reminded of that 2021 Japanese film “Drive My Car” which features a 1987 Saab 900 coupe – owned by a playwright who is driven around by a young woman.
I love foreign films and may have to check this one out. Thank you!
https://i0.wp.com/saabblog.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Garry-Small-Saab-4.jpeg?ssl=1
There is still a former Saab dealer (Garry Small) in business in Portland. He kept the look of a Saab dealership where he specializes in the sales and service of used Saabs.
That’a so great. This is actually the direction that I had hoped Trio Motors in Burton would take.
Nice post Joe – thanks.
Built in Finland would indicate that the crab was built by Valmet, a contract assembler not unlike Magna Steyr. I suspect all the convertibles were built by Valmet, not just the peak load overspill
Thanks, Roger, and also for this good info. I know so little about SAABs in general.