Rebadged Saab

"Slant6" (slant-6) 10/07/2014 at 21:10 • Filed to: None

1

5

Saab 99 test mule badged as a Daihatsu.

Boxer_4 > Slant6 10/07/2014 at 21:15

1

Apparently, the reason Daihatsu was chosen was because it could be spelled with the letters Saab had available from the other models they sold.

Tohru > Slant6 10/07/2014 at 22:31

0

"Well, I'm convinced that's not a Saab." - Nobody ever.

Slant6 > Tohru 10/07/2014 at 22:33

0

The hood mounted mirror really got me.

Tohru > Slant6 10/07/2014 at 22:41

0

Dogapult wants to do fender mirrors on his G35. With how the car is shaped they might end up as hood mirrors.

Hahayoustupidludditeshutupandgohandcrankyourmodeltalready > Slant6 10/08/2014 at 07:52

0

The story behind the 99 and it's prototypes is very interesting. From multiple Wikipedia articles, Wiki's words in italics:

On April 2, 1965, Gudmund's day in Sweden , after several years of planning, the Saab board started Project Gudmund. This was a project to develop a new and larger car to take the manufacturer beyond the market for the smaller Saab 96 . This new car became the Saab 99, designed by Sixten Sason and unveiled in Stockholm on November 22, 1967.

Stealth was part of the roll-out plans. The first prototypes of the 99 were built by cutting a Saab 96 lengthwise and widening it by 20 centimetres (7.9 in); this created the so-called Paddan (The toad ), which was a disguise for the new project.

After that phase, also as a disguise, the first 99 body shell was badged " daihatsu " as that name could be made up out of letters available for other Saab models.

(If they also had had an 'e' and an 'o', they could have used DeTomaso to really confuse people)

The reason for this project was to preserve secrecy during development of the new model, the Saab 99, which was the company's first radically new body shape since the first cars made in 1947. The Toad used the body of a Saab 96, which was long enough for the purpose but had to be widened by 20 centimetres (7.9 in). This was achieved by cutting the body in half lengthwise and inserting 20 cm of steel 'spacer'. The windscreen (windshield) and rear window clearly showed the 'seam'. Of course, the bonnet (hood) and grille required widening in a different way, to prevent changing the appearance of the centrally-placed features, as the picture shows. The Triumph ' in-line four ' engine of the future Saab 99 replaced the ' Ford Taunus V4 engine ' of the Saab 96.

The Toad project was quite short-lived. It was rightly believed that the wider body would not be noticed on Sweden 's roads, where so many Saab 96 cars were an everyday sight. This deception was successful, for a while, until test drivers allowed a grey 'toad' to be followed by a similarly-coloured but 'normal' Saab 96, making the different proportions obvious to any observer.