For decades, Saab owners encountered Rony Lutz without necessarily knowing his name. His signature sat quietly in the corner of illustrations that appeared in brochures, technical publications, advertising material and dealer literature: bodywork made transparent, turbochargers glowing beneath sheet metal, suspension components suspended in space and complete cars rendered with a degree of mechanical accuracy that photography could not provide.
Those images are familiar. The originals are not.
That distinction is what makes the upcoming Swedish sale unusually significant. On October 11, 2026, Auktionshuset STO Bohuslän will conclude a dedicated Rony Lutz auction through Auctionet, putting a substantial group of his original automotive artwork into private hands.
The current Auctionet catalog for “Rony Lutz – The Man Who Illustrated SAAB” contains 89 lots. The auction house’s original September 24 announcement referred to 91 works, so the live catalog should be treated as the current figure. No explanation has been given for the difference. The original announcement can still be found through Auctionet’s press release.
What is being dispersed is not simply a portfolio of attractive Saab pictures. It is material from a period when technical illustration formed an important part of the way Saab explained its engineering.
Rony Lutz arrived at Saab just as the 99 changed the workload
Lutz was born in Nuremberg in 1938. His father operated an automotive repair shop, giving him early exposure to machinery and cars, although Lutz chose art rather than mechanics as his profession. After art studies in Germany, he moved to Sweden in 1960, initially working in the printing and advertising industries in Nässjö and later Linköping.
Saab eventually heard about the young illustrator with a strong interest in cars.
On May 2, 1969, Lutz joined Saab in Linköping. The timing mattered. The Saab 99 had recently entered the picture, the company was expanding its model and marketing activities, and the small advertising department suddenly had much more technical material to produce.
The department consisted of only a handful of people and was headed by Gunnar A. Sjögren — GAS, himself an important figure in Saab’s graphic history. Sjögren had previously produced many of Saab’s illustrations personally. Lutz was brought in to reinforce a system where the illustrator was expected not merely to beautify a brochure, but to understand what engineers were trying to communicate.
A detailed account of Lutz’s Saab career can be found in the Saab Veterans Association archive.
That working environment helps explain why Lutz’s images look so different from conventional automobile advertising art of the period.
He was not simply painting shiny cars. He was illustrating how they worked.
The Saab cutaway was an engineering document
Lutz became particularly associated with the detailed images Saab often called X-ray illustrations. A complete car might remain visually recognizable while portions of its body became transparent, exposing the drivetrain, passenger compartment, suspension, structural members, fuel system or turbocharging hardware beneath.
The effect appears effortless when reduced to a brochure page. The original process was anything but.
Lutz worked with drawing pens, ink, brushes, airbrush and opaque watercolor or gouache. Creating an accurate technical cutaway required information from people who actually designed the components. According to the Saab Veterans Association’s detailed account of his work, Lutz repeatedly traveled and met with engineers in Trollhättan and Södertälje, discussing which components should be shown and how they should relate visually to the surrounding structure.
Technical illustrator Göran Börgesson in Trollhättan was among those who helped provide drawing material.
A particularly complicated illustration could consume two or even three months of work. The Saab Car Museum’s feature on Rony Lutz provides further insight into the methods behind these drawings.
That time investment becomes easier to understand when viewing the large originals rather than the reduced images most enthusiasts know from printed literature. Brake lines, wiring, intercoolers, engine accessories, body reinforcements and cabin structures had to remain legible while the car itself still looked convincingly three-dimensional.
Photography could show what Saab had built. Lutz could show why it had been built that way.
“Form och Funktion” gave those drawings a job to do
Perhaps the best setting for Lutz’s work was Saab’s technical publication Form och Funktion, known in the United States as Engineering Features.
These publications gave Saab the space to explain engineering decisions in considerably greater depth than a normal sales brochure. Editions were produced around the 900, 9000, 9-3 and 9-5, using illustrations to explain subjects ranging from turbocharging and structural design to engines and safety systems.
By the final model year of Form och Funktion in 1998, the publication was reportedly being produced in roughly 25 languages.
For Saab enthusiasts who have accumulated original sales literature, this is one reason Lutz’s style feels immediately familiar even when the individual illustration is not. His visual grammar became embedded in the printed Saab experience.
The current auction reverses that process. Images that were reproduced and distributed internationally are returning to their starting point: one physical sheet created by one illustrator.
Saab 9000 pushed the technique even further
The introduction of the Saab 9000 in 1984 gave Lutz one of his most demanding subjects.
Saab had a completely new large car whose internal packaging, safety construction, turbocharged engines and equipment had to be communicated to customers and journalists. The Saab Car Museum notes that the 9000 substantially increased Lutz’s workload.
In 2024, when the model celebrated its 40th anniversary, the museum devoted a special exhibition to Lutz. Organized by Saab Cars Magazine editor-in-chief Claes Johansson, it combined familiar 9000 illustrations with previously unseen working material.
Among it was evidence of one particularly revealing Saab episode: the aborted four-wheel-drive Saab 9000 Ecosport project of 1992. The background is covered in detail on the Saab Car Museum exhibition page.
For another look at how the 9000 continues to generate unusually specific enthusiast stories decades later, SaabPlanet recently covered the 1987 Saab 9000 T16 Airflow preserved in Denmark.
The 9000 AWD drawing that had to be changed at the last moment
The Ecosport story also shows just how closely Lutz’s illustrations followed Saab’s engineering process.
The planned 1992 Geneva show car incorporated four-wheel drive, and Lutz had already completed an X-ray illustration of the concept. A poster based on the drawing was intended for the motor show.
According to the Saab veterans’ account, approximately two weeks before the Geneva show, Saab received instructions that the AWD version could not be presented. Later reporting has attributed the conflict more specifically to priorities within the wider GM/Opel organization, but the contemporary Saab account is clear about the result: the technical team had to alter the car, while Lutz had to alter his illustration.
The Ecosport eventually appeared without the four-wheel-drive system that had originally justified much of the project.
That is an extraordinary detail in the context of this auction. A Lutz cutaway was not necessarily produced years later as historical artwork. In some cases it existed while the engineering program itself was still changing.
The illustrator was close enough to the development process that a last-minute product decision could create a last-minute drawing emergency.
From Ursaab to Viggen: the auction reads like a Saab timeline
The current Auctionet catalog moves through a considerable portion of Saab history.
Among the Saab subjects are Ursaab 001, Saab 92 and 92B, 93, 95, 96, Sonett, 99 and 99 Turbo, 900, 900 Turbo, 900 Cabriolet, 9000, 9000 CD, 9000 CS, 9-3, 9-3 Viggen and 9-5, together with separate engine illustrations, technical X-rays, studies and preliminary drawings.
The complete group can be browsed on the Auctionet Rony Lutz auction page.
For enthusiasts of the 99, it is worth comparing Lutz’s original period imagery with the cars that survive today. SaabPlanet’s feature on Caspar Hietbrink’s restored 1978 Saab 99 Turbo provides exactly that later-life counterpoint: the engineering Lutz once documented on paper is now being reconstructed component by component by restorers.
The same applies at the other end of the timeline. Among the recognizable later subjects is the Saab 9-3 Viggen in Lightning Blue, a color and specification that became closely associated with Saab’s late-1990s performance identity.
SaabPlanet previously examined one particularly unusual survivor in Victor Dolk’s Lightning Blue 1999 Saab 9-3 Viggen Convertible restoration.
Placed beside those real cars, Lutz’s work acquires another layer: these are not retro illustrations created after the models became collectible. They belong to the period in which Saab was actively explaining and selling them.
Not everything in the collection carries a Saab badge
The auction also makes clear that Lutz’s interests extended well beyond his employer.
After retiring from Saab in 2002, he continued painting, with particular attention to aerodynamics, streamlined automobiles and record-breaking machinery. The sale includes subjects such as Porsche Typ 64, Blue Bird III, Rumpler Tropfenauto, Chrysler Airflow, Cisitalia, Adler, Hanomag and Auto Union, among others.
One example already highlighted through Auctionet is a three-motif Auto Union original by Rony Lutz.
These works help place the Saab drawings in a wider context. Lutz was clearly fascinated by cars in which engineering could be read directly from form — streamliners, experimental vehicles, record cars and machines shaped by aerodynamic purpose.
That interest also connects naturally with some of Saab’s own history. The company’s best designs rarely treated aerodynamics as a surface styling exercise. Even speculative Saab design work continues to attract attention for the same reason, as seen in SaabPlanet’s look at the Lionsharp Saab 999 Turbo design story.
This is not the Saab Car Museum emptying its archive
One point deserves clarification because of the scale of the sale. The auction house describes Lutz, now 87, as choosing to allow his life’s work to continue with new owners. That should not be interpreted as the Saab Car Museum selling off its Lutz archive.
The Saab Veterans Association has previously stated that a large portion of his Saab originals is preserved in the Saab Car Museum archive, and the museum’s 2024 exhibition drew directly on that material.
The museum continues to use Lutz’s work as part of the historical record. Even its later promotional activity has included his illustration of Ursaab, confirming how closely his graphic work has become associated with the institutional presentation of Saab history.
So the significance of the October sale is slightly different: a very large group of originals that could otherwise have remained largely inaccessible is being split into individual collectible works.
After October 11, those sheets may end up in Sweden, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Japan or anywhere else the Saab collector community reaches.
A technical illustrator recognized by another technical illustrator
There is also a fitting modern connection behind the attention the auction is receiving.
Vadim Dobrovolskyi, the automotive cutaway illustrator better known as Carvad, recently highlighted the sale through Carvad Cutaways on Facebook, drawing attention to Lutz’s career and the Saab originals now heading to auction.
That reaction matters because Dobrovolskyi works in the same exceptionally specialized visual discipline. The admiration is not simply Saab nostalgia; it comes from an illustrator who understands the difficulty of showing a complete machine while keeping the image readable and visually balanced.
Lutz’s work also continues to circulate through contemporary enthusiast and museum channels, including this Instagram post.
There is a reason these drawings remain immediately recognizable even beside modern digital cutaways.
Their precision is technical, but their hierarchy is human. Lutz decides where the viewer’s eye should enter the image, which component should remain opaque, which surface should disappear, how deep the transparency should extend and when engineering accuracy must give way to visual clarity.
Software can now produce a technically perfect exploded model in seconds. Making somebody understand it is a different task.
October 11 will put a price on images Saab owners have known for decades
Auction results will inevitably draw attention when the final bids arrive. Certain subjects — particularly the 900 Turbo, 9000, technical X-rays and Viggen material — already have obvious appeal to model-specific collectors.
But the more interesting aspect of this sale is not which sheet becomes the most expensive. It is the transition from published Saab material to collectible original art.
For years, many of these images existed primarily as pages to study: in brochures stored in gloveboxes, Engineering Features booklets kept by dealers, magazine illustrations, posters and museum displays. The physical paintings and drawings behind those reproductions remained largely invisible.
The October auction exposes that earlier layer.
A Saab 900 cutaway is no longer simply a familiar diagram of a 900. It is a sheet on which Rony Lutz spent weeks determining exactly how much of the door, floor, dashboard, suspension and engine bay needed to disappear so the engineering beneath could be understood. That is why this particular auction deserves attention beyond the collecting market.
Rony Lutz did not design Saab’s engines, bodies or chassis. He designed the way generations of people saw inside them.
On October 11, many of those original views will leave one collection and begin entirely new histories on someone else’s wall.
