When Thomas Musanti Jr. contacted SaabPlanet, he was not proposing a conventional classified listing. He had reached the point where several decades of Saab books, models and company memorabilia needed to leave the house, partly at his wife’s insistence, and he wanted the pieces to reach people who would recognize them.
The photographs showed three established Saab books, several boxed scale models, a Saab-Scania Distribution Center brochure from Meriden, Connecticut, and the large Saab-Scania flag Thomas had displayed outside his home. One image, however, changed the direction of the article.
It shows Thomas inside a Saab warehouse, surrounded by industrial shelving and handling equipment, wearing a black tuxedo and bow tie on his final day at the Connecticut operation. The suit was his own farewell gesture. The location represented a much larger transition: Saab’s American parts business was leaving the Connecticut organization in which Thomas had built his career, while distribution responsibility was moving to a new operation in Pennsylvania. The objects are available for sale, but the more valuable record is Thomas’s account of the people and warehouse work behind Saab’s American expansion.
Getting Into Saab Through a Teamsters Warehouse
Thomas’s route into Saab began with a connection he had been specifically advised not to mention.
The union representative at the warehouse was also an umpire in the softball league in which Thomas played. They recognized one another, but the union official warned him not to bring up that acquaintance during a job interview.
Thomas was eventually hired as a supervisor in Saab’s Connecticut parts operation. Any expectation of an easy introduction disappeared when he learned that Lenny, the union president, worked in his department.
“Ahh, heaven,” Thomas recalled. “No – the worst.”
The line summarizes the position of a warehouse supervisor working between management requirements and a unionized workforce. Dealers needed correct parts without delay. Employees were expected to follow handling and inventory procedures. Management needed productivity, accuracy and predictable shipping. The supervisor stood where all three demands met.
This was the industrial side of Saab Cars USA, well removed from the advertising, road tests and product launches normally used to document the company’s American history.
SaabPlanet has previously covered that history through the career of former U.S. product-planning executive William “Bil” Walters, the leadership of Robert J. Sinclair, and the American initiative that led to the production Saab 900 Convertible. Thomas’s story begins further downstream, after a new Saab had been sold and a dealer needed a windshield, lamp, gearbox component, brake part or trim panel.
“Every Yuppie Wants a Saab”
Thomas describes Saab’s American acceleration in one short sentence:
“Here comes success. Every yuppie wants a Saab.”
The wording belongs to the period. During the 1980s, the Saab 900 became closely associated with American professionals who wanted a European premium car without choosing the established German alternatives. Under Sinclair, Saab’s U.S. organization also pushed projects tailored to American demand, most visibly the four-seat 900 Convertible.
That commercial rise, examined in SaabPlanet’s feature on Saab’s gamble in the American market, created an equally important problem behind the showroom: the existing parts system had to support a growing dealer network and an expanding population of cars. Thomas remembers Saab’s headquarters and parts warehouse operating within the same broader Connecticut organization during the earlier phase. As volumes increased, the company acquired property in Meriden with plans for a larger campus-style operation. The most tangible result was a dedicated parts distribution center.
One of the pieces now in Thomas’s collection is the original Saab-Scania Distribution Center, Meriden, Connecticut brochure. Its cover shows the building behind four flagpoles carrying the American, Swedish, Connecticut and Saab-Scania flags. The period document is particularly useful because the proposed wider campus was never completed as Thomas remembers it. The distribution center, however, was built, staffed and placed into service.
The Meriden Center Was Built for a Much Larger Saab USA
A contemporary report published in the August/September 1987 issue of NINES recorded the scale of the change. Saab-Scania’s new center occupied part of a 165-acre property, was intended to serve approximately 175 to 180 dealers in the eastern and southern United States, and was expected to employ about 70 people across two shifts.
The transfer from the earlier Orange, Connecticut, operation involved roughly 30 trailer loads of stock per day, with full operation scheduled for August 17, 1987. The building also handled parts for Scania’s North American truck and bus activities. The complete period issue can be read through the Saab Club of North America’s NINES archive and in this digitized 1987 issue.
The equipment described in the report indicates what warehouse supervision involved. Tall storage racks held numbered parts and accessories. Carousels were used for smaller, fast-moving stock. Wire-guided cranes moved along aisles, raising operators to the required storage positions. Parts left through multiple loading bays, while a separate collection point allowed dealers to pick up large items directly.
For owners, this machinery was invisible. Its performance became apparent only when it failed.
A dealer receiving the correct component could finish a repair and return the car to its owner. A mislabeled box, broken windshield or delayed mechanical part could leave a Saab occupying a workshop bay for days. Thomas’s work belonged to that narrow margin between a sophisticated parts catalog and the physical object arriving intact.
SaabPlanet previously introduced NINES as a primary archive of North American Saab activity. Thomas’s brochure and photographs provide the employee-level counterpart to those printed reports.
Leaving Connecticut in a Tuxedo
Thomas marked his last day at the Connecticut facility by arriving in formal evening wear. The surviving photograph is blurred and imperfect, but its details are sufficiently clear: a warehouse interior, industrial racks, Saab material in the background and Thomas standing on the floor in a tuxedo. It is difficult to mistake the intent. This was not a routine Friday at work.
The photograph also avoids the usual visual language of corporate departures. There is no executive group, presentation plaque or staged handshake. Thomas appears in the place where he had actually worked, dressed for an occasion that the building itself could not acknowledge. By then, Saab’s parts-distribution structure was changing again.
The Fogelsville Handover
According to Thomas, Caterpillar Logistics assumed responsibility for Saab’s U.S. parts distribution, with the new operation based in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley. Saab asked him to help with the transfer because the new workforce needed both inventory knowledge and practical warehouse training. Thomas would leave Connecticut on Sunday evening, work through the week in Pennsylvania and return home on Friday. On some weekends, his family traveled south rather than waiting for him to come back. The routine reveals the human cost of a logistics decision that otherwise appears as a change of address on company paperwork.
Inventory was being moved from an established union operation into a warehouse staffed largely by new employees. Thomas says even basic procedures had to be taught from the beginning: identifying stock correctly, selecting appropriate packaging, separating fragile and heavy components, and understanding what could safely share a carton. He remembers mislabeled parts, damage involving warehouse equipment and one particularly obvious packaging failure: glass components had been packed in the same carton as brake pads. The shipment was stopped before leaving the warehouse.
These incidents are Thomas’s first-hand recollections, not findings taken from company incident reports. The same applies to his description of the strained atmosphere in Connecticut as employees faced the elimination or relocation of their jobs. That distinction matters. The operational details should not be generalized into a judgment on the entire workforce. They document what one supervisor encountered while trying to transfer stock and warehouse knowledge between two facilities.
They also explain why Saab retained experienced employees during the handover. A parts database could identify the bin and quantity. It could not teach a new employee that a heavy brake component and a glass panel had no place in the same package. Later successor organizations continued supplying the surviving American fleet. SaabPlanet has followed that network through the work of Saab Automobile Parts North America and the subsequent relationship between Orio and Fred Beans Parts. Today, the official Saab Parts USA network continues to connect owners with original parts and authorized service operations.
Thomas’s account belongs to an earlier chapter, when the stock itself was being physically transferred from Connecticut and the new Pennsylvania team was still learning how to move it.
Three Saab Books With Employee Provenance
The collection Thomas is now offering includes three books that cover distinctly different areas of Saab history. Gunnar A. Sjögren’s The Saab Way: The First 35 Years of Saab Cars, 1949–1984 documents the company’s automobile development through the two-stroke period, the V4 transition, the Saab 99 and 900, and the arrival of the 9000 era. Sjögren was not an outside author assembling a retrospective from press material. He had worked inside Saab and produced one of the books most closely associated with the company’s own historical narrative.
Björn Svallner’s bilingual Alla SAABs Sportbilar / The Sonett, and All Other SAAB Sports Cars concentrates on the Sonett lineage and Saab’s experimental sports-car projects. Published in Stockholm in 1983, the book combines Swedish and English text and remains a specialized reference for collectors interested in the Sonett, competition derivatives and prototypes. Its bibliographic record is preserved by the National Library of Sweden’s LIBRIS catalog. The third volume is Anders Tunberg’s From Two-Stroke to Turbo: Saab in Motorsport Since 1949. Its cover uses a rally Saab 99 in action, while the book follows the competition program from early two-stroke successes through the factory rally era and turbocharged machinery. A catalog record for the title is available through the Finnish Finna library network.
The value of these copies does not depend solely on rarity or condition. They came from someone whose Saab career dealt with the parts infrastructure supporting many of the cars described inside them.
Scale Models From the Classic 900 to the Viggen
Thomas’s photographs also show a group of boxed and cased Saab scale models covering several generations and body styles. The visible selection includes a silver three-door model, a yellow Convertible, red and blue closed-body Saabs, and another red Convertible. A separate close-up shows a blue first-generation Saab 9-3 Viggen, mounted on its display base.
The photographs do not show every manufacturer label clearly enough to establish a complete inventory, so prospective buyers should request individual descriptions and prices directly from Thomas. The model selection nevertheless follows the same progression seen in his books and personal photographs: classic Saab body styles, the Convertible that became particularly important to Saab USA, and the later performance models that carried the brand into the 9-3 era.
The Saab-Scania Flag
Thomas identifies the large Saab-Scania flag as his favorite item. It carries the circular Saab-Scania emblem with the crowned griffin and has been displayed outside his home. In the submitted photograph, it hangs beneath a blue star above two planted evergreens. The flag’s exact origin, dimensions and material still need to be confirmed before the sale listing is finalized. Its connection with Thomas’s employment, however, gives it a clearer history than a similar flag acquired anonymously through an online marketplace.
The same applies to the Meriden distribution-center brochure. Together, those two items represent the corporate identity and physical location around which his Connecticut career was organized.
Two Saabs From Thomas’s Own Driveway
One of Thomas’s older photographs shows two of his full-size Saabs parked at home: a white classic 900 Convertible and a darker Saab behind it. The image is an informal family snapshot rather than a formal vehicle portrait, but it establishes that his association with Saab continued beyond working hours. The books and models were not acquired by a detached employee assembling company merchandise. They remained with a Saab owner who had experienced the cars from both sides of the parts counter.
The white Convertible also connects his personal ownership history with the American product decision most closely associated with Bob Sinclair. SaabPlanet’s account of the 900 Convertible’s development explains how the U.S. organization helped move the concept from an American prototype exercise into production.
Thomas Is Looking for Former Saab Cars USA Colleagues
The sale is only one reason Thomas contacted SaabPlanet. He would also like to reconnect with former Saab Cars USA employees, especially people who remember the Connecticut parts operation or the transfer to Fogelsville. He specifically asked about John Christensen, who spent almost four decades in Saab’s American parts organization and became well known to dealers and technicians through the Saab Parts Help Line. SaabPlanet previously introduced Christensen as a guest specialist at the 15th Swedish Car Day.
Christensen has since created SAAB in the Rearview Mirror, a podcast centered on conversations with former Saab corporate employees. Its stated purpose closely matches the value of Thomas’s account: recording what happened inside Saab’s American organization through the people who worked there. Christensen describes his own Saab career as beginning in December 1984 and ending with his retirement in October 2023, just short of 39 years. Thomas’s story would fit naturally into that growing oral history. The Meriden brochure records the building. The NINES report preserves dates, capacity and dealer coverage. His memories supply the warehouse politics, weekly commute, training problems and tuxedo that formal records would never include.
Thomas Musanti Jr.’s Saab Collection Is for Sale
Thomas is offering the Saab books, scale models, Meriden company literature and Saab-Scania flag shown in the accompanying photographs. At the time of publication, he had not supplied a fixed price list. Interested readers should therefore contact him for:
- Individual prices
- Package or combined-sale options
- Model manufacturers and scales
- Book condition
- Flag dimensions and condition
- Shipping availability within or outside the United States
Contact Thomas Musanti Jr.: https://www.facebook.com/thomasmusantijr
Former employees from Orange, Meriden, Fogelsville or other Saab Cars USA operations are also invited to contact Thomas or leave a comment. Names, dates and additional photographs could help reconstruct a part of Saab’s American history that has received far less documentation than the cars themselves.
Tom made work fun! He is soon to be a guest on the SAAB in the Rearview Mirror Podcast. Great article!