Garry Small Is Leaving the Saab Business at 86 – But Portland’s Saab Lifeline Is Not Closing

Garry Small’s Saab chapter is ending, but the shop is not!

For Saab owners on the American West Coast, Garry Small Saab has never been just another used-car lot with a Swedish sign outside. It has been one of the few remaining places where a 900, 9000, 9-3, 9-5 or 9-4X could still be treated as a Saab, not as an orphaned European oddity with aging electronics and hard-to-source parts.

Now the man whose name is on the building is stepping away.

In a new interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting, Garry Small confirmed that he is selling his East Portland Saab dealership and service center after 40 years in business. OPB describes the shop as the last remaining Saab dealership and official Saab service center on the West Coast, a line that explains why this local Portland business still matters far beyond Oregon. The full OPB interview with Geoff Norcross is available here.

Portland’s Saab Shop Will Remain an Official Saab Service Center!

The key point is not simply that Small is retiring at 86. The real story is continuity. According to Small, the new owner plans to keep the employees, technicians and parts counter staff, and the shop will remain an official Saab service center. For owners who still depend on that workshop, that matters more than the change in ownership.

A Saab business built in 1986, tested in 2011

Garry Small opened the store in East Portland in 1986. Saab was still an active manufacturer then, with a recognizable dealer network, new-car inventory, factory support and a customer base that saw the brand as something very specific: safe, individual, practical, turbocharged and engineered with a different set of priorities.

That world collapsed in stages, but the decisive break came in 2011, when Saab filed for bankruptcy protection. Small told OPB that he had around 15 new Saabs in stock when the manufacturer’s collapse hit his business. Suddenly, those cars were extremely difficult to sell because the normal factory warranty structure was gone.

The dealers eventually worked together with an attorney to create a warranty program that helped move the remaining cars, but it was not equal to a full factory warranty. Small said it did not cover items such as paint or interior issues, and the financial damage was severe. He told OPB the dealership lost roughly $10,000 per car and needed about a year to sell through the remaining stock. His description is blunt: the bankruptcy almost put the business under.

That detail gives this story its weight. “Garry Small Saab“ did not survive because the post-2011 Saab world was easy. It survived because the business shifted into the role that became essential after Trollhättan stopped producing cars: used Saabs, service, repair, parts and accumulated knowledge.

Why Saab owners still booked weeks in advance

The strongest line in the OPB interview is not about nostalgia. It is about the service schedule.

Small said the shop is usually booked two to three weeks in advance, because owners come there to have their cars repaired correctly. That is the clearest possible signal that the regional Saab fleet is still alive and active.

A generic repair shop can replace brakes, mount tires or scan fault codes. That is not the same as understanding why a Saab behaves the way it does. A Saab specialist needs to know parts compatibility, typical model-year changes, Tech 2 diagnostics, aging control modules, suspension details, convertible hydraulics, ignition cassette behavior, diesel and gasoline differences in global markets, and the long list of small Saab-specific decisions that can turn a simple repair into a week of guessing.

That is why places like Garry Small Saab carry more value than their exterior signage suggests. They are not only selling and servicing cars. They preserve working knowledge that disappears quickly when technicians retire, parts counters close and former franchise records vanish into storage.

The old Saab dealer model became something else

When we previously wrote about “Garry Small Saab”, the angle was already unusual: Portland still had a Saab dealership years after Saab stopped building cars. That older story now reads like the first chapter of a longer transition. The shop did not remain relevant because it pretended Saab was still a normal new-car franchise. It remained relevant because it adapted to what Saab ownership became after 2011.

The business continued to sell used Saabs, service them and support owners who wanted to keep their cars on the road. That last phrase is one of the few from the OPB interview worth keeping almost exactly as Small said it: “keeping the Saabs on the road.” It is simple, but in this case it is not a slogan. It is a business model.

Saab owners understand the difference. Keeping a 9-5 Aero daily-driver reliable in 2026 is different from polishing a weekend museum piece. Keeping a 9-4X on the road is different again, because that model sits in a strange corner of late GM-era Saab history. A classic 900, meanwhile, asks for a different kind of mechanical sympathy and parts knowledge. A shop that can move across those generations without treating them as unrelated used cars has a rare kind of value.

The new owner is inheriting trust, not only a business

Small told OPB that the new owner is keeping his employees, technicians and parts counter person. That detail should calm Saab owners more than any formal announcement could. The value of this business is not only in the name Garry Small Saab. It is in the people who know the cars, the service history, the customers and the parts network.

For Saab drivers, that continuity is everything. A change of ownership can ruin a specialist shop if the new management treats it as a generic used-car operation. It can also strengthen the business if the existing technical staff stays in place and the new owner understands why customers came there in the first place.

The OPB interview suggests the second scenario. Small was directly asked whether the new owner plans to keep the shop as an official Saab service center. His answer was short: yes.

That one-word answer is probably the most important sentence in the interview for the West Coast Saab community.

Why Garry Small is retiring now

Small is 86. When Norcross asked his age, Small answered plainly and said, “It’s time for me to retire.” That line needs no decoration. After four decades running a Saab business through the brand’s high points, GM years, bankruptcy and long afterlife, retirement is not a surprise.

What he plans to do next gives the story a slightly unexpected turn: vintage racing in a Volvo P1800. Small told OPB that his race car is what keeps him going, and that he races at Portland International Raceway and in Seattle.

For readers who only know him through Saab, the Volvo connection may sound strange. It is not. Small explained that he started with Volvo in 1962, had a Volvo service center, and raced Volvos before the Saab dealership took over his working life in 1986. He put racing aside for decades, returned to it around six years ago, bought and rebuilt a Volvo P1800 race car, and now wants more time for that side of his life.

That makes his retirement feel less like an exit from cars and more like a return to the part of his automotive life that predates the Saab dealership.

A local Portland story with a much wider Saab meaning

On paper, this is a local business transition in East Portland. In Saab terms, it is bigger than that.

The post-bankruptcy Saab network in North America has been held together by scattered specialists, former dealers, independent workshops, parts suppliers and long-term owners who refused to let the cars become disposable. Garry Small Saab has been one of those points of stability.

That is why the OPB story deserves attention from Saab owners who may never have visited Portland. It shows how the Saab ecosystem actually works in 2026. Not through corporate press releases, not through new model launches, and not through speculative revival talk, but through service bays, parts counters, technicians and owners willing to wait two or three weeks for someone who knows the car.

Garry Small is leaving the Saab business after 40 years. The important part is that the business he built appears ready to keep doing what made it relevant in the first place: selling, repairing and servicing Saabs for owners who still drive them.

Similar UK Saab Specialist Story

Not every retirement story ends with continuity. Across the Atlantic, another long-running independent Saab specialist has just announced its final closing date – with no successor and no handover. Perry & Prouse in Taunton, UK, will shut permanently on July 31 after 24 years, leaving Saab owners across the South West of England asking the same question Garry Small’s customers once feared: where do we go next?