When A Fifth Door Sparked A Culture Clash: Renault 20 vs. Saab 99 Combi-Coupé

The fifth door was never just a piece of sheet metal. In the late 1970s it was a statement—about how families traveled, how people worked, and how carmakers dared to redraw class lines. That’s the quiet electricity humming beneath AutoWeek Netherlands’ retro comparison between the Renault 20 and the Saab 99 Combi-Coupé – two very different answers to the same question: what happens when practicality takes the driver’s seat in the upper-middle class?

Their test – and the period it resurrects – gives us a rare, revealing look at how Saab’s iconoclastic hatch met France’s consummate pragmatist at exactly the moment Europe learned to love a “grote klep.”

The Fifth Door That Rattled The Old Order

By the mid-’70s, the hatchback had already conquered the small-car ranks – the Renault 4 and 5, the Simca 1100, then Golf and Fiesta told the story. But the upper-middle class still clung to the three-box silhouette like a dress code. The idea that a large car could wear a wide-opening tailgate felt indecorous to traditionalists: people and luggage were supposed to live in separate quarters, the thinking went, as if to keep labor away from leisure – and “work” well away from “weekend.” France, long unembarrassed by agricultural pragmatism, kept testing those boundaries. First came the pioneering Renault 16; by 1975–1977 the baton passed to the Renault 30 and Renault 20, and suddenly the respectable classes had to reconsider what a modern family car looked like.

Saab had been flirting with this new geometry since 1974, when the 99 Combi-Coupé arrived as a three-door “Wagon Back” in the U.S. By 1976, the five-door 99 joined the range, and with it, Trollhättan smuggled Scandinavian logic into a segment still measuring prestige in chrome inches. In that light, the AutoWeek test isn’t just a face-off between two period heroes. It’s a snapshot of a cultural pivot, one that would lead directly to the classic Saab 900 silhouette – and mainstream acceptance that flexibility and status could share the same parking space.

Two Shapes, Two Philosophies: French Ease vs. Swedish Intent

Look at them side by side and you feel the difference instantly. The Renault 20 reads like an elegant grown-up evolution of the 16—long glasshouse, light and airy cabin, and a stance that, with its larger front overhang, seems to lean into the horizon. Inside, it’s soft surfaces and soft power: plush seats that welcome you like a lounge chair, chrome-ringed dials that lend a touch of salon refinement, and (in this tested early TL 1.6) a polite drivetrain that prefers glide to gallop.

The Saab 99 Combi-Coupé, by contrast, is all purposeful eccentricity. The long, tapering tail that once unsettled some eyes now draws them in – its profile aged into icon status because Saab committed to the line for decades. Slip inside and you’re greeted by the brand’s famously businesslike matte-black dashboard, the almost comically large hub of the steering wheel, and those aircraft-inspired seats with the distinctive cut-out headrests. The glass is narrower than in the Renault, the roofline feels lower, and the cabin closes around you not as confinement but as cockpit. Saab wasn’t trying to recreate a living room; it was building a driving instrument.

Both cars were born practical – folding rear benches expand the load bays into useful, near-flat spaces – but they narrate practicality differently. The Renault emphasizes openness (wide doorways, light flooding the cabin), while the Saab leans into clever detail: doors that wrap over the sills to spare your trousers from road grime; a parcel shelf you secure with a clip to the tailgate; controls placed where safety logic dictates, not where fashion suggests.

Controls As Credo: The Saab Way Of Doing Things

Half a century on, the quirks documented in AutoWeek’s video still read like a condensed Saab manifesto.

Ignition in the center console?

Of course – so your knees won’t meet a protruding key in a crash, and so the transmission can lock in reverse as an anti-theft measure.

Seatbelt “catcher” instead of a conventional buckle?

A safety-minded experiment to keep hardware out of your face when the belt retracts. Lighting on a dash switch, heater and ventilation on three big rotary knobs, legends in Swedish – everything is chosen, not inherited.

If you’ve never lived with a 99, the first blocks around town rewrite expectations. Pedal efforts are light, the four-speed shift is precise fore-aft with a guidance gate you learn to caress rather than shove, and the unassisted steering loads up convincingly at parking speeds before relaxing into an easy arc once you’re rolling. The chassis sits firm but not punitive; roll is present, measured, and communicates weight transfer cleanly. Saab designed the 99 to eat distance on cold, imperfect roads – comfort with control, rather than nap-time softness.

None of which means the Renault feels uncultured. The 20’s long wheelbase – a substantial 18 cm stretch over the Saab – buys it doors that open wide and a cabin that breathes. In shape and response, the 20 is totally coherent with Renault’s late-’70s brief: serene, gently sprung, deliberately easy. The video’s tester calls it “bijna een beetje Amerikaans” – almost American in its lush ride – and on a rippling Dutch dike road the metaphor fits. It’s not slow-witted; it just refuses to rush.

Space, Seats, And Suitcases: The Daily-Life Test

Numbers say the two are nearly the same size outside; lived experience says otherwise. You enter the Renault as you would a well-designed room: big doorway, plenty of kneeroom, the welcome of soft seats that make you exhale. In the back, adults won’t complain. The hatch opens wide…though the wheel housings pinch the floor and length is modest.

The Saab takes the opposite route. You step through tighter apertures into a denser, cockpit-like front space. The rear bench is adequate rather than lavish. But flip that bench and lift the shelf and you reveal the Combi-Coupé’s secret: a cargo floor that’s long, flat, and fantastically usable for the class.

Yes, the vertical space is stingier than the Renault’s, but if your life is prams, strollers, skis, guitars, or long boxes, the 99’s load length turns errands into a kind of smug satisfaction. Saab called the body style a “Combi-Coupé” on purpose: wagon logic with coupé attitude.

If you transported small kids and their stuff every day in period, AutoWeek’s testers leaned Saab. If you routinely ferried tall adults, Renault won the back-seat vote. It’s a tidy illustration of how, even when the fifth door unified the silhouette, the philosophies remained far apart.

Engines, Gearing, And That Late-Seventies Tempo

The pair tested by AutoWeek are quintessentially time-stamped. The Renault 20 TL brings the familiar 1,647-cc four from the 16 TX – about 90 hp – a motor perfectly polite in daily use but understandably breathless when asked to hustle a bigger, more luxurious car. Period buyers felt it too; Renault added a 2.0-liter TS by mid-1977, which helped the 20 feel better matched to its mission. The test car runs a owner-fitted five-speed (factory TLs were four-speed), and with retrofitted power steering its manners improve to the point where you simply guide it, not manage it. Brakes are progressive, if pedal effort climbs when you really lean on them—period normal.

The Saab 99 Combi-Coupé here carries the classic B-series 2.0-liter with twin carbs– about 108 HP – or the Bosch K-Jetronic injection version at 118 hp on other trims. The gearbox is a four-speed; reverse locks the key. What it lacks in outright thrust compared with later turbocharged Saabs, it pays back in throttle clarity and gearing that feels honest to the torque curve. The steering has more initial heft and – unassisted – an old-world, mechanical trustworthiness once underway. You point it, it leans, it talks back, and the car’s essential competence shows in the way it absorbs poor surfaces without marinade.

If you grew up on Saab folklore, you’re already waiting for 1978, when Garrett-blown 99 Turbos rewired expectations: 145 hp, an honest 200 km/h, and 0–100 km/h in 9.2 s. It’s crucial context for this comparison. The Combi-Coupé body gave Saab the canvas; the turbo gave it a thesis. And from that thesis came the 900, which immortalized the hatch line that once seemed so odd.

Memory, Meaning, And The Luxury Of Feeling “Verwend”

One of the video’s most human moments is the tester’s confession: the Renault 20 wasn’t just a car; it was his grandfather’s car, a light-green memory parked by the front door. That matters, because classics are never only machines – they are time machines. Sit in a 20 and the gold-brown trim mirrors the paint; the dash glints with chrome; the ride breathes. It’s not a sports sedan, not even by the generous standards of the era. But it spoils you. The Dutch word he reaches for is telling: verwend – pampered.

By contrast, the Saab 99 trades pampering for identity. The tester laughs at the belt “catcher.” He fights the unassisted steering at a crawl, then nods when it comes alive on the move. He notes how compact the cabin feels, how bolstered the windshield seems—how it all adds up to a drive that, while not fast, feels distinctly Saab. In the end, despite sentiment pulling toward the Renault, he admits the Combi-Coupé’s character wins him over. “I’m not even a Saab guy,” he says in effect, “but this one has something.”

That is precisely the Saab trick: persuade the uninitiated not with outright speed or silk, but with a cocktail of logic, comfort, and delightfully weird, safety-led detail.

How These Two Changed The Family-Car Conversation

Neither the Renault 20 nor the Saab 99 invented the hatchback; both helped normalize it where it mattered. Renault proved that elegance could wear a tailgate without shame, easing conservative buyers into a more flexible lifestyle at precisely the moment Europe’s leisure culture expanded. Saab used the Combi-Coupé to redefine its brand shape – one that would house front-line turbocharging and carve out a niche where safety and speed shook hands.

From there, the dominoes fell. Audi extended the idea to the 100 Avant (C2). Saab’s 900 turned that tapering tail into a signature that lasted well into the 1990s. Even late-’80s prestige makers, once suspicious, embraced fastbacks and wagons that proudly blended work and weekend. Today the idea that you’d separate “cargo” from “people” in a family car feels archaic. You can trace that shift right back to cars like these.

The Practical Verdict That Still Holds Water

AutoWeek’s conclusion keeps its feet on the ground. If you’re daily-driving a classic today, both cars make sense. With small kids, the Saab’s deep, long load floor and protective sill-covering doors make life easier. Carry full-size adults often? The Renault’s palace of a back seat wins. In a straight-line comparison, performance is close enough that preference becomes personal: French plush vs. Swedish calm; lounge chair vs. cockpit; pampered vs. purposeful.

And yet, for Saab people – and people who might become Saab people – the 99 Combi-Coupé offers more than a way to carry things. It offers a way to be: to start the car where logic says, to arrange controls where hands fall, to enjoy a seat that supports rather than seduces, to accept that a slightly heavier wheel at a walking pace pays you back with confidence at speed. It is, in other words, a Saab.

The Turbo That Changed The Tune (And The Customers)

One strand of the AutoWeek article deserves its own spotlight: how the Combi-Coupé reframed Saab’s clientele once the turbo arrived. Early on, the five-door format drew buyers to the posh GLE trims, especially those coming from other brands. But 1978 flipped the script. With Garrett’s turbo bolted on, the 99 became sensational in period terms – not just for its numbers but for what those numbers signified. All at once, the Saab showroom began attracting people who prized technology, speed, and a discreet badge. Safety didn’t disappear; it coexisted with speed. That duality- calm speed, sensible speed – became the Saab hallmark.

If you’re wondering why our community still reveres the 99, look past the spec sheet to that image pivot. The Combi-Coupé carried it; the 900 perfected it; the 900 Turbo mythologized it. The fifth door was the form. The turbo was the voice.

Dakar Dreams And French Tenacity

To keep things honest, the Renault 20 has its own legendary detour. In 1982, the Marreau brothers took a 4×4 Renault 20 – R18 Turbo heart transplanted – and won Paris–Dakar. If the hatchback once looked like a shopping helper, Dakar turned the trope into a punch line. The 20 could wear a suit and then go win a desert knife fight. That small footnote lands with force in the AutoWeek video: the “comfort car” with real grit when properly engineered. It doesn’t beat Saab’s turbo saga for influence, but it earns the Renault 20 a permanent, storied footnote.

Why This Comparison Still Matters To Saab People

For SaabPlanet readers, this isn’t nostalgia for its own sake. It’s a refresher on why our cars feel the way they feel, and why they look the way they look. The 99 Combi-Coupé in this test is less a rival to the Renault 20 than a prelude – to the 900’s long arc, to the way Saab owners measure comfort (in hours arrived relaxed, not in seconds to 60), to the way we celebrate oddness with purpose. If, like the AutoWeek tester, you sit in the Combi-Coupé a skeptic and get out with a half-surprised smile, that’s the brand doing what it always did best: changing minds gently.

As for the Renault, its achievement is different and no less meaningful. It made good taste and usefulness the same thought. It prepared European buyers for a future where the best cars could be quietly brilliant at daily life without advertising status. In that sense, these two five-doors didn’t just compete; they collaborated in modernizing expectations.

Watch The Test, Then Tell Us What You’d Drive Home

We encourage you to read the original write-up – [AutoWeek’s “Renault 20 vs. Saab 99 Combi-Coupé”] – and then watch their video, which we’ve embedded below for context. You’ll hear the unassisted steering grunt, feel the Renault’s easy stride, and watch the Saab’s long cargo bay swallow half a neighborhood.

After you’ve watched it: would you take the pampering Renault 20 with its lounge-chair seats and gentle manners, or the characterful Saab 99 Combi-Coupé with its cockpit calm and endless load floor? We know where our hearts land—but as this lovely comparison proves, there’s no wrong answer when the fifth door is this right.

Acknowledgment

This article is a journalistic reflection based on AutoWeek Netherlands’ original comparison and accompanying video. Full credit to the author and production team for preserving this era on screen and page; we link to their work above so readers can engage with the primary source in full.