saab 600

[nic038]

Just wondering after watching the recent top gear episode regarding saab cars and the way they tinkered with the GM models,no matter what GM told them to do.
Has anyone had any dealings with the saab 600 and if so was this just a rebadged delta or did saab get to make some of their adjustments/improvements to these as well ?

[SteveGales]

Had a look in a couple of books, La Lancia (Wim Oude Weernink) and Lancia A-Z ( Brian Long) and there is only a very brief mention of the
Saab 600.

Apparently Saab were involved with the design of the heating / ventilation and also corrosion protection (!) at the design stage. No mention of
different trim , spec change on the 600. According to Wikipedia only the 1500 engine was offered in the Saab version.

Steve

[Niels Jonassen]

The Saab 600 was an ordinary Delta only with a Saab 600 sign put on the back. It even retained the Lancia logo on the front. I know for sure that it was sold by Saab dealers in Sweden and Denmark, and probably also in Norway and Finland. However, the dealers in Sweden did not like the car, nor did the agent in Denmark. I remember talking to a Danish Saab dealer who was furious because he could not get the car from the agent. He said that he had lots of customers for this car, but the Danish agent did not want to deal with it. Consequently very few were sold. The story goes that while the engineers from Saab and Lancia went very well along together those in charge of marketing and business did not.

[fay66]

Have a look at http://www.saabhistory.com/2008/12/01/the-saab-600-1980-1982/,
in 2010 I put another writeup on here about the Saab/Lancia 600 which stated that Saab developed their own heater to suit the home climate but decided to up the thermostat to a 92c one instead of the standard 82c, unfortunately they didn't increase the capacity of the cooling system and created an overheating problem instead, here's the link http://www.lancia.myzen.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=3497.0
just putting Saab 600 into the search box comes up with lots of links and photos.

Brian
8227

[SteveGales]

Thanks Brian , I must admit I'd forgotten all about your previous posts (2010) on this , very interesting !

Steve

[nic038]

thanks for the updates, certainly from reading seems that saab did have a little tinker with these as well as far as the heater system goes,wondering if the shell recieved any treatment to improve it's strength (under the cover of corrosion protection ? ).I suppose the only answer to that would be to speak with someone who worked at the factory or compare the two cars side by side.