Before GM900 Became a Verdict: How the Press Read Saab’s New 900 in 1993

Automotor saw the Opel components, questioned parts of the styling and came away fascinated by Sensonic. Reading its September 1993 test alongside other contemporary coverage shows how differently the second generation 900 was judged before three decades of GM era hindsight changed the argument.

Thirty three years of hindsight have made the second generation Saab 900 much easier to label than it was to judge. Today, “NG900” and “GM900” immediately bring a complete set of associations: GM2900, Opel Vectra, transverse engines, the first Saab V6, Sensonic, later chassis revisions and the long list of changes that eventually separated the first 9-3 from the car introduced in 1993. None of that accumulated history was available to the journalists opening the doors of the new 900 that summer.

That is why the September 1993 issue of Portuguese magazine Automotor is worth revisiting. Its headline, “O Início da Renovação,” or “The Beginning of the Renewal,” now reads almost like a question rather than a declaration. The magazine was examining a Saab whose reputation had not yet formed, only weeks after the new model had been presented in Trollhättan on July 21. Contemporary Saab histories place roughly 35,000 people at that launch and record more than 3,000 orders during the first ten days. It was the first completely new Saab developed after General Motors acquired a 50 percent stake in Saab Automobile.

The useful part is not whether Automotor ultimately “got the car right.” It is the criteria the magazine used to decide whether Saab had got the car right.

The Opel connection was already front page material

Later enthusiast discussion sometimes gives the impression that the NG900’s GM ancestry gradually emerged as owners and specialists discovered how much hardware was shared. That is not what this 1993 article shows. Automotor discussed the relationship immediately. The Vectra comparison was already there, the common dimensions were noted, Opel components were explicitly mentioned, and the new V6 was examined partly through its GM origins.

The magazine also repeated Saab’s position that the 900 should not simply be described as sitting on the platform of one Opel model. Saab argued that the project used components and engineering solutions selected from the wider GM organization and developed around its own requirements. Automotor did not swallow that explanation whole. There is a noticeable skepticism in the article, which is important because it prevents the review from becoming a piece of launch publicity.

What has changed since 1993 is the weight assigned to the shared hardware. The broad relationship to GM architecture is no longer controversial. What the contemporary journalists had not yet decided was whether that fact alone defined the finished car.

That question was also appearing elsewhere. In August 1993, the Christian Science Monitor reported from Trollhättan that the exterior remained “distinctly Saab” while describing the car’s heritage beneath the surface as considerably less clear. The same report was unusually direct about the financial reality behind the project: GM’s investment had helped keep both Saab and the new 900 development program moving.

That is a different starting point from asking whether the NG900 was a “real Saab.” The press already knew it was a corporate hybrid. What journalists were trying to establish was whether the compromises were visible from the driver’s seat.

For context, the old 900 itself had hardly appeared from nowhere. Its origins stretched back through the Saab 99 and the X36 development program, a story covered in detail in SaabPlanet’s Project X36 history. The difference in 1993 was that the engineering genealogy no longer remained inside Saab.

Automotor was reviewing a business model as much as a car

One of the strongest parts of the Portuguese feature is its opening discussion of Saab’s finances. The review does not isolate the new 900 from the company that had to manufacture it.

Automotor reported workforce reductions approaching 50 percent, a break even target of around 80,000 cars a year instead of the previous 120,000, component cost reductions of roughly 15 percent and major cuts to fixed and distribution costs. The most striking figure concerned production time. Saab had needed about 110 hours to build a car around 1990, according to the period figures, while the target surrounding the new 900 had fallen to roughly 30 hours. The 110 to 30 hour change is also recorded in later Saab histories of the model.

Those figures should be read as contemporary company and magazine reporting rather than independently audited financial data, but they explain the car better than another argument over suspension components does. Saab’s previous industrial model had become unsustainable. General Motors did not create the need for Saab to lower costs; it arrived while that need was already acute.

Saab AB’s own historical account confirms the fundamental ownership change. The automobile operation was separated from the rest of Saab around 1989 and 1990, with GM taking half of the newly formed Saab Automobile. GM would not acquire the remaining half until 2000.

Seen from that perspective, the NG900 had an unusually difficult brief. It had to cost dramatically less to develop and manufacture, exploit a large corporation’s component base, attract buyers beyond Saab’s existing customer pool and somehow avoid feeling as though those economic decisions were the principal reason for the car’s existence.

Automotor was effectively testing whether that industrial equation worked.

The conservative shape makes more sense in its original context

The second generation 900 no longer looks controversial. Familiarity and the later 9-3 have made its shape part of Saab history. In the 1993 photographs, however, the design strategy becomes much easier to understand.

Saab retained the 900 name, the hatchback profile, a recognizable beltline and a front end that could not plausibly be mistaken for an Opel. This was not simply an exercise in retro styling. Saab needed existing 900 customers to recognize their next car at a glance while asking buyers of the Audi 80, BMW 3 Series and Mercedes C Class to consider a brand that was now trying to compete with very different production economics.

Automotor did not regard every part of the design as successful. The rear received noticeably cooler treatment than the nose and profile. The magazine thought the new lamp arrangement, with a visible relationship to the 9000, did not integrate as confidently with the rest of the design. That is one of the most useful period observations in the whole feature because three decades of familiarity have largely erased the sense that the rear of an NG900 ever looked new or contentious.

Contemporary American reaction could be much warmer. When Car and Driver tested the 1994 900SE for its November 1993 issue, its writers also approached the car expecting the GM relationship to have diluted Saab. Instead, the magazine found that the new model retained a clearly identifiable personality, praising its packaging, driving behavior and unusually individual character. Its verdict described the car as “still uniquely Saabish.”

That does not make either magazine correct and the other wrong. It shows something more useful: the early argument was about execution, not purity.

The cockpit is where GM became much harder to see

The interior gave Automotor stronger evidence that Saab had decided where it was unwilling to become conventional. The ignition remained beside the handbrake. The driving position was praised. Controls continued to be arranged around the driver rather than around a generic corporate dashboard architecture.

The most interesting element was not the center ignition, which Saab owners already knew, but Black Panel.

It is worth using the original name here. “Night Panel” came later with the 9-3 and 9-5. On the new 900 the system was Black Panel, extinguishing most instrument illumination while leaving the speedometer visible and bringing relevant instruments back when the car required the driver’s attention. Saab histories of the 1994 model year list Black Panel and Sensonic together as the two technologies the company particularly emphasized at launch.

From the perspective of 2026, Black Panel is so closely tied to Saab cockpit design that criticism of it sounds almost heretical. Automotor had no such obligation. The writer understood the principle of reducing nighttime distraction but wondered whether an instrument suddenly illuminating because the fuel level was low or the engine was approaching the redline could itself attract attention at the wrong moment.

That small criticism tells us more about the value of a contemporary review than another paragraph praising “aviation inspired design.” Black Panel had not become heritage yet. It was technology being evaluated on its behavior.

The safety story received similarly serious attention. Automotor reported 19 different crash test configurations, reinforced body structures, a standard driver airbag and Saab’s continued use of integrated child safety ideas. Independent model histories also record the 19 crash tests, while Saab’s workshop documentation confirms a driver airbag on all 1994 900s and passenger airbags either standard or optional depending on market.

The magazine even described crash data recorders intended to gather information from real accidents in Sweden. That detail sounds unusually modern, but Swedish insurer Folksam was indeed using crash pulse recorders in large numbers of cars during this period, including Saabs.

Here the distinction between platform origin and vehicle development becomes harder to compress into “Vectra underneath.” A shared industrial base does not tell us why Saab spent engineering time on Black Panel, integrated child protection or real world accident data.

The engine verdict is more interesting when it is not turned into a specification table

The launch range gave Automotor four different ways to judge what the new Saab was becoming: a 2.0 liter four, a 2.3 liter four, the new 2.5 liter V6 and the 185 hp 2.0 Turbo. The differences in the magazine’s reactions are more revealing than the power figures themselves.

The naturally aspirated 2.0 was acceptable rather than memorable. The 2.3 provided additional flexibility but carried a displacement penalty in the Portuguese tax system that weakened its case. The V6 was treated more favorably than a later Saab enthusiast might expect. Its smoothness and sound suited the more upmarket role Saab was pursuing, although the magazine noted that its relatively modest displacement prevented it from delivering the effortless performance associated with larger six cylinder rivals.

That is worth correcting from the first version of this article. Automotor did not dismiss the V6. The original test found it refined and appropriate for the expected customer, even while openly discussing its GM connection. The skepticism was more about what the V6 added to the 900 than about whether it was permitted to exist in a Saab.

The Turbo generated a different kind of interest because its behavior already belonged to an established Saab vocabulary. With 185 hp and strong torque available from low engine speed, it required much less explanation. Yet even here, the engine itself was not the most surprising part of the test. Sensonic was.

Sensonic is where hindsight changes the story most

Sensonic is now one of the easiest NG900 technologies to view through hindsight. It was rare, short lived and disappeared when the 900 gave way to the 9-3. For anyone maintaining an old Saab today, the absence of a clutch pedal attached to a conventional manual gearbox is more likely to provoke questions about parts and diagnosis than excitement about the future of transmission design.

That was not how Automotor saw it in 1993.

The magazine’s writers were genuinely impressed by the electronically controlled clutch. They liked the smoothness of engagement, found it sufficiently precise for enthusiastic driving and noted that useful engine braking remained available. The interesting historical point is not whether Sensonic ultimately succeeded in the market. It is that a journalist encountering the system without hindsight did not experience it as a gimmick.

The technology looked credible.

Saab’s own rollout would prove slower than the Portuguese launch forecast suggested. Model year histories place actual customer availability of Sensonic on the Turbo with the 1995 model year, another reminder that Automotor was driving the new 900 while parts of the program were still moving. SaabPlanet has a separate technical examination of exactly how the system worked in How Stuff Works: Saab Sensonic.

Even the specification table in the Portuguese magazine preserves that unfinished quality. It published performance figures for the 2.0i, 2.3i and V6, while the Turbo’s top speed and acceleration cells were still empty. The three door and Convertible were also future additions at this point. Saab history records that both were shown during the first months of 1994.

This was not a mature model range being judged after a year of customer experience. The journalists were almost inside the launch process.

Automotor was not alone in finding a Saab underneath the corporate story

This is where the 1993 feature becomes more valuable when read alongside other contemporary journalism.

On August 18, before the Portuguese issue appeared, the Christian Science Monitor described the new 900 as the most important Saab in years and directly connected the project’s existence with GM’s financial support. The article was not naive about shared technology, yet it still found the exterior unmistakably Saab.

In October, The Independent described the 900 as a model developed in conjunction with GM and placed it directly into the increasingly competitive European executive market. Cost, insurance and the attempt to broaden Saab’s appeal were already central parts of the British launch discussion.

Then came Car and Driver in November. Its test was hardly written by Saab apologists. The magazine compared the car with much more conventional alternatives, identified weaknesses and considered the GM relationship explicitly. Yet its conclusion was emphatically not that Saab had produced a disguised Opel.

That broader context changes the meaning of Automotor’s description of the new 900 as possessing a “very Saab” personality despite the Opel components. It was not an isolated Portuguese reaction. Several journalists encountering the car during its first months reached variations of the same conclusion.

The platform relationship was obvious. The disappearance of Saab character was not.

The harsher GM900 verdict came later

What happened afterward is part of the reason the 1993 material now feels unfamiliar.

Once cars accumulated mileage, journalists gained access to early build quality problems, owners developed long term experience and Saab itself began revising the product, the tone changed. By 2002, Auto Bild could headline its used car assessment with “Da steckt viel Opel drin,” effectively “there is a lot of Opel in it,” while discussing rattles, fit issues and the V6 as an Opel derived component.

Much later retrospective coverage became harsher still. MotorTrend, looking back from decades away, included the 1994 900 in a feature on disappointing cars of the 1990s and treated the Vectra relationship as the central symbol of what had gone wrong.

Neither later view invalidates what journalists wrote in 1993. They were answering different questions with different evidence.

A launch journalist could assess design, controls, performance and first impressions. A used car writer could judge rattles, component durability and faults that only appeared after years of ownership. A retrospective writer could compare the NG900 with the classic 900, the later 9-3 and Saab’s entire subsequent history.

What is misleading is to project the final verdict backward and assume that everyone in 1993 had already reached it. They had not.

The Saab 2000 photograph now says more than it did in 1993

The strongest photograph in Automotor’s feature shows the new 900 on the airport apron with a Saab 2000 turboprop filling the background. In period, the association was straightforward. Saab had spent years linking its cars with its aviation heritage, and the new 900 gave photographers another opportunity to make the connection literal.

Seen now, the photograph carries a different tension.

The aircraft represents the industrial history from which Saab Automobile wanted to draw its identity. The car in front of it represents the economic structure within which that identity now had to survive. One came from the old integrated Saab world. The other could only exist by using capital, components and manufacturing logic from General Motors. Automotor did not ignore that contradiction. It put it near the center of the story.

What the magazine did not do was reduce the answer to a platform code. The journalists saw the shared dimensions, the Opel components and the GM V6. They also saw the center ignition, driver focused cockpit, Black Panel, Saab safety work, turbocharged four cylinder and Sensonic. Some of those ideas impressed them, some did not, and a few would later disappear completely.

That is why this old road test is more useful than another attempt to decide whether the NG900 deserves to be called a “real Saab.”

It records the moment before that phrase became necessary.

In September 1993, the question facing the press was more precise: could Saab surrender part of its industrial independence without surrendering the reasons someone would choose a Saab?

Automotor had all the evidence of GM involvement in front of it and still thought the answer, at least initially, was yes. Three years later, Saab would take production 900s to Alabama for the endurance exercise remembered as the 1996 Saab 900 Talladega Challenge. By then, the NG900 had started building a history of its own. In September 1993, it had none. And that is precisely what makes the review worth reading now.