In 1986, This Saab 9000 Turbo Taxi Had a Mobile Phone, Pager, TV and VHS

A Swedish magazine clipping from 1986 opens with a question that was entirely reasonable at the time: “Världens modernaste taxi?” – “The world’s most modern taxi?”

The car photographed underneath was a new Saab 9000, equipped through a collaboration between Saab and Televerket Radio, Sweden’s state telecommunications operation. A surviving Televerket Facebook archive post identifies the car as a Saab 9000 Turbo.

What made the taxi unusual was not the roof sign or its Televerket Radio graphics. It was the amount of communications and entertainment hardware installed inside.

Mobile phone, taxi radio, pager, TV and video

According to the original article, the Saab was fitted with a mobile telephone, communications radio, pager, television, video recorder and car stereo.

Three antennas handled the various systems. The small antenna positioned toward the rear of the roof served the normal taxi radio, while the two longer antennas mounted farther back were connected with the other equipment.

The mobile phone was intended for situations where the ordinary taxi radio could no longer reach its network. The pager could receive messages anywhere within coverage of Sweden’s national radio broadcasts.

That combination makes considerably more sense when placed in Sweden’s telecommunications history. The country’s NMT mobile network entered service on October 1, 1981, only five years before this Saab was photographed. Ericsson’s historical archive records how quickly demand grew, turning Sweden into one of the earliest substantial mobile-phone markets in the world.

Ericsson’s history of the NMT launch provides useful context for just how significant an automotive mobile phone still was in 1986.

Televerket was also operating paging services. The Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology preserves examples of the MBS pager system, which transmitted via the FM broadcasting network and had around 75,000 users by 1989.

The Saab taxi effectively brought several separate communications networks into one dashboard.

VHS for the passengers

The most entertaining part of the installation was reserved for the rear seat.

A video cassette recorder and monitor allowed passengers to watch a VHS tape on longer journeys. One of the magazine photographs shows the screen mounted behind the front seats, while another shows taxi owner Hans Nilsson of Karlstad demonstrating the mobile telephone.

The Swedish text explains the idea very simply: during a long taxi journey, the passenger could select a tape that interested them.

There was no streaming, touchscreen interface or centralized infotainment system connecting these functions. The remarkable part is precisely the opposite: Televerket Radio had assembled several large, independent pieces of 1980s communications equipment inside a production automobile while leaving enough room for the car to continue functioning as a taxi.

The magazine specifically praises the Saab 9000 for providing comfort for both passengers and driver.

Several Swedish cities received the equipped taxis

The article says that the system could already be experienced in Luleå, Sundsvall, Arlanda, Gothenburg and Karlstad, with further expansion planned.

Curiously, the surviving clipping subsequently lists Malmö and Gothenburg again, apparently repeating Gothenburg in the original printed text.

This was therefore not presented simply as a one-car showpiece. Televerket Radio and Saab had equipped taxis operating in several locations.

The choice of the 9000 also fits the period. Saab had introduced the model only two years earlier, and the original 9000 was launched around the 2.0-liter 16-valve turbo engine. A useful model-year overview remains available through the Saab Museum’s Saab 9000 archive.

And 1986 would become an unusually important year for the 9000 for another reason. Later that year, three production 9000 Turbos covered 100,000 kilometers during Saab’s famous Talladega endurance run. We have covered that very different test of the same model in our detailed story about Saab’s 1986 Talladega program.

Saab taxis have some serious mileage behind them

The Televerket car was not Saab’s only connection with professional taxi work.

Swedish taxi driver James Bergqvist had already been using Saab Turbos under considerably harsher conditions. According to a surviving account based on period Saab material, his 1979 Saab 900 Turbo reached 650,000 kilometers before he replaced it with another 900 Turbo in 1982. That second car reportedly passed one million kilometers after five years of taxi service. The story and period Saab-Scania imagery are documented by SaabBlog.

Much later, the pattern continued with newer Saabs.

In 2016, we documented a Saab 9-5 NG used as a taxi that had already reached 350,000 kilometers, reportedly without major problems beyond regular maintenance. That car can be revisited in Saab 9-5 NG Taxi Clocks 350,000 Kilometers in France.

There is an even more deliberate Saab taxi story in Finland. Retrotaksi, founded in 2016, operated classic Saabs as working taxis around Helsinki. One of its cars was a Saab 99 GL 5-speed that we featured when it was offered for sale: A Finnish “Retro Taxi” Sells Their Saab 99 GL 5 Speed.

Those later cars provide useful context for the 1986 photograph. The Televerket Saab was not remarkable because somebody had decided to put a TAXI sign on a 9000. What separated it from an ordinary working Saab was the hardware inside.

A mobile phone, communications radio, nationwide pager, stereo, television and VHS player were all operating in the same Saab 9000 taxi in 1986.

The magazine’s headline was therefore not particularly exaggerated. For a passenger climbing into Hans Nilsson’s Saab in Karlstad that year, “the world’s most modern taxi” was a defensible description.