Erik Wankerl’s Saab 900 Turbo Concept Reaches Portuguese Print in autoDRIVE #91

A four-page column in the Portuguese magazine turns the 2025 design study into the visual centerpiece of a very personal case for one more Saab 900.

A familiar yellow Saab appeared in an unexpected place this week. autoDRIVE #91, the summer 2026 issue of the Portuguese automotive magazine, devotes four pages to a column by editor João Santos Matos titled “Saab qual é o meu carro preferido?” The issue was announced on August 10, and the Saab column is specifically listed among its contents by autoDRIVE.

The photographs of the printed magazine show pages 10 through 13 dominated by a bright yellow interpretation of a modern Saab 900 Turbo: a low three-door body, dark glasshouse, three-spoke wheels and a rear profile intended to make the connection with the classic 900 immediately apparent.

Those images have a history of their own. The car is Erik Wankerl’s Saab 900 Turbo 2025 design study, first shown in April 2025. The project was covered in detail at the time, when Wankerl explained how he had used ChatGPT image generation as part of an iterative design exercise before refining the results himself in Photoshop.

Sixteen months later, his imaginary Saab has made the transition from LinkedIn and automotive websites to the pages of a conventional printed car magazine.

A half-day experiment that traveled much further

Wankerl did not present the 900 Turbo 2025 as a secret manufacturer project, a proposal commissioned by Saab AB or a prototype under development. His original LinkedIn post was remarkably transparent about how the images had been made.

He had spent roughly half a day working with ChatGPT to develop a design sketch for a contemporary Saab 900 Turbo. The intention was to retain enough of the classic car’s visual structure for the result to remain identifiable as a 900, rather than simply placing Saab badges on an unrelated modern body. He then worked separately on the three-spoke wheel design as a reference to the familiar Saab INCA wheel and completed the images with additional Photoshop work.

Wankerl also imagined his new 900 as electric. The “Turbo” designation was therefore deliberately conceptual rather than an attempt to specify an actual turbocharged powertrain. His post referred playfully to an electric Turbo in the spirit of the reborn Renault 5.

There was no engineering package behind it. No platform, battery capacity, motor output, dimensions, production proposal or business plan was announced. What existed was a design exercise examining whether enough of the 900 could survive the transition into a present-day vehicle.

That distinction remains important now that the images are circulating again. The yellow car in autoDRIVE is not evidence of a new Saab program. It is the same independent design study Wankerl created in 2025.

Wankerl also approached the experiment from a professional design background rather than simply generating a few images and attaching a Saab name afterward. He has been Professor of Media Design at IU International University in Bremen since April 2025, with teaching fields including brand development, corporate design, cross-media design and corporate communications. IU describes his work as combining design, brand strategy and organizational development, with AI increasingly affecting how designers develop and evaluate concepts.

The concept quickly escaped its original LinkedIn post

The first wave of attention arrived almost immediately.  German magazine Auto Motor und Sport featured the concept on April 4, 2025, crediting the images to Erik Wankerl and discussing the design in relation to the original 900. Swedish publication CarUp followed on April 5, while SaabBlog examined the proposal in the context of Saab’s own unfinished design work from the company’s final years.

The project consequently developed a second life outside Wankerl’s own post. Different publications began asking a slightly different question from the one that had started the experiment.

Instead of simply asking “Can AI generate a modern Saab?”, discussion moved toward what characteristics actually have to survive for a new car to read as a Saab 900.

That is a much more interesting question.

Many unofficial Saab revival exercises start with the badges and grille. Wankerl worked the other way around. The recognizable elements are concentrated in proportion and silhouette: the long sweep of the roof, the compact rear section, the relationship between the side glass and body, the visual weight around the wheel arches and, most obviously, those modernized three-spoke wheels.

The concept is not a literal digital copy of a 1980s 900. Nor does it reproduce every original Saab detail correctly. It instead uses a handful of visual cues strong enough to carry the identity without requiring a retro body shell.

That may help explain why the images have remained in circulation for more than a year.

João Santos Matos uses the concept differently

The new autoDRIVE appearance is particularly interesting because João Santos Matos is not writing a feature about Erik Wankerl or AI design.

His four-page column is essentially a personal Saab autobiography.

Matos begins with the deceptively simple question contained in the title: what is his favorite car? He cannot give a single answer, but Saab keeps intruding into it. He remembers growing up around the 900, having a black three-door Turbo Bburago model at hand and later being fascinated by the 9000.

From there, the column moves through several very different periods of Saab ownership and product history.

The 900 Convertible occupies an important part of his memory. Then come his years in the United States, where Saab’s position within General Motors exposed him to two cars that could hardly have existed under the earlier Trollhättan product philosophy: the 9-7X and 9-2X. He recalls the latter in particular, the Subaru-based car Americans nicknamed the “Saabaru.”

Later memories include a second-generation 9-5 and the 9-3X 1.9 TTiD, which Matos says he tested while working for the Portuguese automotive press. The 9-3X left a stronger impression. He recalls its 180-hp twin-turbo diesel and the fact that the diesel version available to him was front-wheel drive rather than XWD.

This is not written like a model history or buying guide. It is deliberately subjective, moving between childhood models, road tests, American-market curiosities and the way Saab seats remain a personal reference point when Matos judges the seats in other cars.

Then the yellow Wankerl car becomes relevant.

The yellow 900 is effectively the final paragraph in visual form

Toward the end of the column, Matos returns to something many Saab enthusiasts have probably done privately: defining the minimum conditions under which they would accept a new 900.

His answer is surprisingly flexible.

He does not insist that a hypothetical new car reproduce the original drivetrain. He would accept a hybrid. He even allows for a fully electric 900, provided the resulting car justified the name and retained enough of the original idea.

That is why Wankerl’s render works so well as the central image of these pages.

Matos calls the yellow car a Photoshop-like extrapolation of a dream and suggests that, although it exists only as an image, it could at least provide inspiration for what a modern 900 might become. His conclusion is not that this particular car should enter production exactly as shown. The render gives a visible form to a car he knows almost certainly will not be built.

The large image on page 13 is especially effective in that context. The rear three-quarter view carries the SAAB lettering across an otherwise unusually clean tail, while the proportions do most of the work. There is no attempt to reproduce the rear of a classic 900 panel by panel.

It is a fictional car illustrating a very real argument.

One date in the Portuguese column needs context

Matos writes that Saab “disappeared in 2016.” For readers familiar with the complicated final years in Trollhättan, that sentence needs some qualification. Saab Automobile AB filed for bankruptcy in December 2011. Saab AB itself describes 2011 as the end of the Saab passenger-car business. NEVS subsequently acquired most of the Saab Automobile bankruptcy estate and temporarily returned the 9-3 to production, but that did not reverse the bankruptcy of Saab Automobile.

The significance of 2016 is different. That was the year NEVS publicly established its own brand identity and made clear that its future vehicles would no longer carry the Saab name. The transition was covered at the time in SaabPlanet’s report on the new NEVS brand and subsequently in coverage of the company’s internal brand launch.

For a personal magazine column, Matos’ shorthand is understandable. For the historical record, however, 2011 and 2016 describe two different endings: the bankruptcy of Saab Automobile and the later end of the Saab name on NEVS’ future car plans.

That distinction has become even more visible recently, as the remaining Saab and NEVS vehicles held in Trollhättan have gradually emerged from storage and returned attention to what actually survived the post-bankruptcy period.

Why this particular unofficial Saab keeps returning

There have been hundreds of imagined Saab successors since production stopped. Some are careful independent design studies. Others are quick renders, student projects or increasingly AI-generated images carrying familiar badges.

Most disappear after a few days of social-media circulation. Wankerl’s 900 has proved unusually durable.

Part of that comes from timing. When it appeared in April 2025, manufacturers were already demonstrating how aggressively historic model names could be reused for new electric cars. The question of whether a 900 could receive similar treatment therefore no longer sounded entirely theoretical.

But the larger reason is probably the choice of source material. Trying to invent an entirely new Saab requires defining what Saab design would have become after another decade of uninterrupted development. That path inevitably collides with Saab’s real unfinished programs, including the Phoenix architecture and the various proposals being developed in Trollhättan before the bankruptcy.

Reinterpreting the classic 900 is a narrower problem. Its identity is sufficiently established that viewers can immediately judge what has been retained, exaggerated or lost. Wankerl’s study therefore works as a discussion object even for enthusiasts who would never buy the imaginary EV it represents.

That discussion continued at SaabBlog, where readers were directly asked whether an electric 900 revival would be acceptable. The poll eventually showed a clear majority willing to consider the idea, although the result obviously represents that site’s participating readership rather than the Saab community as a whole.

autoDRIVE has now added another chapter without conducting another poll or proposing another technical specification.

Instead, João Santos Matos placed the yellow car beside memories of a Bburago 900 Turbo, the 900 Cabriolet, the 9-2X, the 9-5 and the 9-3X and asked essentially the same question in a much more personal way: after all these years and all these different Saabs, what would it take for one new 900 to feel worth having?

There is still no manufacturer preparing Wankerl’s car, and the images do not move the prospect of a Saab revival any closer to production.

What has changed is their status.

A half-day design experiment posted online in April 2025 has survived long enough to become the visual centerpiece of a four-page Saab column in a Portuguese print magazine in August 2026.

For an imaginary Saab 900, that is already a remarkably long road.