When Lionsharp Studios first contacted SaabPlanet about its fictional Saab project, the finished 1993 Saab 999 Turbo Cabrio was the obvious attention grabber. It had the right visual ingredients to stop a Saab enthusiast immediately: a front end that still belongs to the late Classic 900 world, a much lower and wider body, huge side intakes, turbine inspired wheels, and a rear section that suggests an expensive specialist model Saab never had the budget or corporate freedom to build.
The project breakdown supplied by Lionsharp reveals that the Cabrio is only the last chapter. The real project is much larger. The studio did not set out to create one attractive render and then invent a story around it. It developed a fictional Saab program with its own historical premise, design research, sketches, 3D blockouts, interior studies, wheel development, a competition derivative, a virtual Saab Design Lab, and a final road car that appears to have evolved through a believable internal process.
That distinction matters. The Saab 999 is interesting because Lionsharp treated an imaginary car with many of the methods it would use for a real client project.
The Beginning Was a Sketch, Not a Marketing Brief
Lionsharp says the idea emerged during an internal team briefing after the group saw early sketches by Jérémy Sachot. The sketches immediately suggested something worth developing, although there was no client, no commercial deadline, and no obligation to make the process efficient. The team could therefore approach the project as its own customer.
The goal became unusually strict for a piece of fan art. Lionsharp wanted to create a car entirely developed by the studio while grounding it as firmly as possible in Saab history, design philosophy, and visual language. That meant avoiding a common shortcut in fictional Saab design, where a familiar grille or badge is attached to a body that could belong to almost any sports car.
Instead, Lionsharp chose a historical period first.
The fictional project begins in the mid 1980s. The internal question was simple: what if Saab had decided to challenge Porsche with a serious high performance sports car at a time when the 911 and 930 dominated the segment and Europe was obsessed with turbocharging, Group B, the Renault 5 Turbo, Lancia Delta S4, and Audi Quattro?
This was never presented as a claim about a real lost Saab program. It is design fiction, but the period gives every later decision a set of boundaries.
Why the Name 999 Makes Sense Inside the Fiction
The name came from the same logic. Lionsharp describes the Saab 900 as one of the project’s main reference points, but the new car needed to feel like something above it in the hierarchy.
The studio therefore treated 999 as a numerical escalation of 900, an intentionally exaggerated flagship designation for what it calls the most radical Saab that never existed. It is a small detail, but it shows how the team tried to make even the name part of the internal logic rather than choosing a random number that merely sounded Saab related.
Research Before Styling
The strongest part of the project may be the research stage. Lionsharp did not restrict itself to images of the 900 and 9000. Its boards combine production cars, prototypes, safety diagrams, transmissions, seats, color and upholstery references, rally material, engineering cutaways, old advertising, brochures, and less obvious pieces of Saab visual culture.
A Saab collector named Piotr became important to this process. Lionsharp credits his private collection of original brochures, catalogues, homologation material, and period photography with giving the project a layer of authenticity that online image searches could not provide.
This changed the scope of the research. The team was no longer studying only what Saab cars looked like. It was also studying how Saab documented, photographed, explained, and marketed its engineering. That material later became part of the fictional Design Lab environment.
The research boards also show that the studio looked beyond the obvious 900 references. The Saab EV 1 is especially relevant because it was a real 1985 running experimental car based on 900 Turbo hardware, yet it placed familiar Saab thinking inside a much lower and more dramatic body. The Saab 900 Speeder is another useful historical parallel because Björn Envall and Leif Mellberg had already demonstrated that an open, radically altered 900 based special could still retain a recognizable Saab identity.
The Lionsharp 999 is not a recreation of either car. Those projects matter because they prove that Saab’s own design culture occasionally moved much further from the production range than the company’s conservative image suggests.
The Initial Technical Brief Was Deliberately Extreme
Lionsharp’s early fictional brief went beyond styling. The initial 1985 concept was described as a rear engine, two seater, rear wheel drive sports car measuring roughly 4300 millimeters long, 1900 millimeters wide, and 1300 millimeters high.
The speculative powertrain was a 2.1 liter B202 based bi turbo engine producing around 400 horsepower.
Those figures should not be read as an attempt to reconstruct a real Saab engineering proposal. They belong to the project’s fictional world. Their importance is that they forced the designers to move away from simply reshaping a 900. A rear engine layout, a wide rear track, major cooling requirements, and a compact two seat cabin naturally pushed the body toward proportions Saab never used in series production.
Interestingly, the final summary in the project document describes the car differently, as a mid engine, six cylinder turbocharged two seater that would sit above the 900 and challenge the Porsche 959. Rather than hiding that change, it is more revealing to see it as evidence that the fictional mechanical package evolved while the designers worked. Lionsharp was designing a world as well as a car, and not every early assumption survived to the end.
Drawing in the 1980s While Working in 2026
The studio also imposed a methodological restriction on itself. Lionsharp says it did not use artificial intelligence to define the creative design process. AI was occasionally used as a fast visualization tool to test whether a direction might be worth pursuing, but design decisions themselves came from sketches, marker studies, colored pencil work, 3D blockouts, and conventional modeling.
That choice is visible in the project pages. The early exterior phase contains loose proportion studies, side profiles, front and rear explorations, and several ideas that were discarded before a 3D blockout was built.
Once the basic shape entered 3D, the team returned to drawing. The blockout became a reference for more detailed sketch work around lamps, bumpers, intakes, body sections, and other surfaces. In other words, the process did not move in a straight line from sketch to model. It moved back and forth between two dimensional and three dimensional work until the proportions and details agreed.
Lionsharp admits that this was not always easy. Its artists are used to current vehicle design and modern visual expectations, so the team repeatedly had to resist making the car too contemporary. The challenge was not to make the 999 attractive in 2026. It was to make it look like an ambitious Saab could have been drawn in the late 1980s and then evolved into the early 1990s.
The Exterior Is Saab Without Being a 900 Reskin
That tension explains why the finished Cabrio is convincing from some angles and deliberately uncomfortable from others.
The front carries the strongest connection to the Classic 900. The rectangular lamps, narrow grille, black bumper structure, and hood treatment immediately establish the period. Yet the rest of the car changes the proportions dramatically. The cabin moves rearward, the rear track becomes much wider, the side intakes dominate the rear quarter, and the body sits much lower than any production Saab of the period.
The important point is that Lionsharp did not use a modern fastback silhouette and decorate it with Saab cues. The project was built around the idea that Saab would still have valued a strong visual passenger cell, clear functional surfaces, protected looking body sections, and engineering led details.
That is why the 999 can look strange without looking anonymous.
The Interior May Be the Most Carefully Researched Part
The interior development deserves more attention than the finished exterior renders initially suggest. Lionsharp built a separate timeline of Saab cabins, then combined that research with Scandinavian furniture and industrial design references from the 1980s.
The objective was not modern luxury. The studio specifically concentrated on proportion, material choice, simplicity, warmth, and the overall mood of the cabin.
Its boards include Saab dashboards, steering wheels, seats, switchgear, center consoles, furniture, radios, lamps, and household objects. The resulting sketches explore deeply padded seats, a driver oriented instrument area, a broad center console, strong horizontal dashboard architecture, and combinations of leather, fabric, dark plastics, and wood toned surfaces.
That approach is particularly appropriate for Saab. A convincing Saab interior cannot be reduced to an ignition switch between the seats. The relationship between controls, ventilation, instruments, visibility, seat geometry, and materials always mattered more than decorative luxury.
The 999’s fictional cabin attempts to preserve that mentality while moving it into a much more expensive two seat sports car.
Even the Wheels Received Their Own Development Program
The wheel study on its own could almost be a small article. Lionsharp treated wheel design as one of the final major decisions because it needed to reinforce the car’s identity rather than simply fill the arches.
The project pages show a large family of alternatives, including three spoke forms, directional patterns, turbine motifs, aero discs, and combinations that clearly reference period Saab and motorsport thinking without copying a production wheel.
The final design is effective because it feels familiar without being identifiable. Its broad graphic surfaces and directional treatment are exactly the kind of detail that makes the finished render appear to belong to one historical moment. Put a modern multispoke wheel on the same body and much of the illusion would disappear.
Group B Came First in the Fictional Timeline
The 999 was not imagined as a single road car. Lionsharp created several interpretations and gave them an internal chronology.
The Group B derivative comes first. In the studio’s fictional history it represents the rawest form of the idea, a car designed without the practicality constraints of a road model. The wide body, competition lighting, rally wheels, aggressive cooling, and functional bodywork allow the designers to test how the 999 language behaves when performance becomes the primary requirement.
From there the fictional program moves to the Coupe, then the Cabriolet.
This sequence is important because it changes how the final open car should be read. It is not simply a convertible version of the Coupe. It is the polished final chapter of an imaginary development program that began with competition.
A Saab Design Lab That Never Existed
Lionsharp then made an unusual decision. Instead of placing the three cars against unrelated studio backgrounds, it built a complete fictional Saab Design Lab.
This is where the project becomes much more than vehicle modeling.
The studio researched period automotive design centers, clay modeling rooms, drafting spaces, furniture, tools, lighting, measuring equipment, and the general disorder of working design environments. The aim was not to create a perfect showroom. It was to capture one plausible working day inside a Saab studio that never existed.
Each 999 variant occupies a different stage of development inside this room.
The Group B car is still early in the process. The Coupe appears as a clay model under development. The Cabriolet has effectively reached the presentation stage and appears nearly ready to leave the studio.
That means the Design Lab scene is also a timeline. One image contains several moments in the fictional life of the same program.
Small details support the effect. Research boards lean against walls. Wheels sit on shelves. Marker sketches and reference material appear around the room. Measuring equipment surrounds the clay model. A finished car passes in the foreground while another body is still being shaped.
The scene would still be attractive without that logic, but with it, the environment becomes part of the storytelling.
The Cabriolet Is the Final Chapter, Not the Starting Point
The finished 1993 Saab 999 Turbo Cabrio is intentionally the most complete version.
Lionsharp describes it as the final chapter of the fictional story and as a grand touring variant that, within the imaginary timeline, would have been the version finally presented to the public.
That explains the level of detail. The team went further here than with the Group B car or Coupe. The final passes include glass, window frames, mirrors, lighting, badges, license plate details, vents, wheel surfaces, interior elements, panel gaps, and smaller trim pieces that would barely register in a wide render but collectively make the car believable.
The rear is especially effective because it refuses to become a generic supercar. The full width visual mass, restrained Saab badging, rectangular lamp graphics, black bumper treatment, and broad deck still refer to the period, even though the proportions are completely unlike a production 900.
The open cabin also changes the character of the car. It reads less like a direct 900 Convertible replacement and more like an expensive Saab grand tourer that happens to be open.
Near the end of the project, the team returned once again to hand drawn marker studies. By then the digital model was already well developed, so the traditional looking sketches were being created beside computers displaying the finished 3D work. That visual collision between old school automotive drawing and a modern production pipeline is one of the most revealing images in the whole project.
Why the Saab 999 Works
The strongest argument for the Saab 999 is not that Saab would definitely have built it. In reality, a rear or mid engine two seat flagship, a dedicated sports car program, and a Group B branch would have demanded resources and corporate priorities that Saab did not have.
Lionsharp does not pretend otherwise.
What the project demonstrates is how much difference disciplined historical framing makes. The team selected a period, studied Saab’s cars and documentation, defined an alternative engineering premise, developed the exterior and interior through multiple phases, created a separate wheel language, imagined a competition path, and then built an environment that shows those cars at different moments in their fictional development.
The result does not need a fabricated factory story to become interesting. It is clearly labeled fan art, and its value lies precisely in showing how professional vehicle artists can use real Saab history as a set of design constraints rather than as a collection of decorative references.
For Saab enthusiasts, that makes the 999 much more rewarding than a simple question of whether the final car looks good. It gives us something to examine, disagree with, and trace back through the studio’s decisions.
The Cabriolet may be the image that attracts attention first, but the real work is everything behind it.
Project Credits
Art Direction: Karol Miklas
Marketing Lead: Robert Bubel
Concept Lead: Sebastian Nowak
Exterior and Interior Design: Jeremy Sachot
3D Modeling: Karol Miklas, Sebastian Nowak, Volodymyr Tykhonov
Rendering and Material Setup: Karol Miklas, Benjamin Escabos, Volodymyr Tykhonov
Additional 3D Modeling and Textures: Michal Wgleż
