Junkyard Find: 1968 Saab 96
I see plenty of Saab 900s in self-service wrecking yards these days, but Saabs older than that have all but disappeared from the U-Wrench-It ecosystem. I did see a truly ancient Saab 92 at a yard over the summer, but that was in the heart of Saab’s homeland. So, it came as a big surprise to spot this Saab 96 three weeks ago in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Yes, Rust Belt residents, this California car isn’t rusty at all.
This car has the four-stroke Ford Taunus V4 engine instead of the two-stroke three-banger used in earlier 96s.
The interior has been stripped pretty thoroughly, but a few pieces remain.
My racer grandfather had one of these cars, which he ice-raced in Minnesota and Wisconsin in the 1970s. Rust killed it, of course.
I have informed the Freewheelin’ Pikers Saab 96-racing 24 Hours of LeMons team about this car, and I hope they have sent their Bay Area-based minions to grab parts off this car before The Crusher eats it.
The Swedish car with aircraft quality!
Here’s another version.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Shaw Saab on the banks of the Back River had a dock and used to get their cars delivered to them directly. There were loads of them.
I posted this on the Saab forums a while back when the yard was trying to sell it as a builder. Said it had 61k miles on it, but I'm not sure if it was accurate (or if it had a 5 digit odo). They wanted $1500 for it. http://saabworld.net/f149/oakland-ca-1968-saab-96-a-30533/