As long as I'm on the subject of 50-year-old pint pots (previous post)... I had not thought of the two-cycle Saab in decades, until I saw Jay Leno's:
http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/1958-saab-93b/188058/
I knew a guy in college who had one. He was from Connecticut. He loved the car, especially in sloppy weather--and he got us around in winter when most of our cars could slither down the hill into town, but not back up the hill to our heights of knowledge. This was before Saab had cachet, and a big reputation for passive safety. That came with the 99, an "upmarket" design. The 93 sold well in New England (Kurt Vonnegut had a dealership on Cape Cod), but it was a rarely seen in the Midwest where we were just getting used to the novelties of the VW Beetle.
I loved the 93. Not as much as my Mini, but more than the Beetle. It had a heater and defroster that actually worked. The two-cycle engine was rev-happy. That is always a plus with me, and I wonder if my lifelong affinity for Lawn Boy mowers was a result of riding around in a Saab 93, years before I had grass to cut. It is not true, as Leno says, that you needed to premix the gas. Just dump a can of oil into a near-empty tank and then run the gas pump at maximum flow to slosh the oil around.
On the other hand, I clearly remember a 4-on-the-tree gearbox with short throws that made the 93 a quick car. And I remember wrong: according to Wikipedia, the standard 93 came only with
3-on-the-tree. As for quick: there was no way a 33 h.p. Saab could stay with a 36 or 40 h.p. Beetle with a 4-speed. It must have been those ringy-dingy revs that made us feel like we were flying.
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