Why the number 9?

Originally: Because the first SAAB car design followed on from the SAAB 91 Safir training aircraft in their list of design projects, and as such became the SAAB 92.

Later: It becomes a recognisable "tag" for a SAAB. Other makers do the same. All three-figure numbers with a middle "0" are trademarked by Peugeot, which is why Porsche were forced to re-label their 901..

I understand that the first saab Car was labelled the 92 because the vehicle design which had made production prior to this ( a civilian aircraft) was designated 91

From then on, the model nos. grew by 1

92 92b 93 94 - think this was the design code for the Sonnet 1 (2 seater sportcar) 95 96 97- think this was the design code for the Sonnet 2 (sport coupe) 98 - design code for an updated 96 99

and then I guess they thought the no. 9 was so integral to the range that it was better to with 90, 900 and 9000 than to continue to 100

With the 9-3 and 9-5, the 3 indictes that it is a bmw 3series class vehicle and the 5 indicates bmw 5series

in article espfmc$eic0$ snipped-for-privacy@osfa.aber.ac.uk, Andrew Robert Breen at snipped-for-privacy@aber.ac.uk wrote on 08/03/2007 17:04:

I know this is true, so it make you wonder how SAAB got to use 900 moniker for (x0x) for nearly 20 years.

Paul

1989 900 Turbo S

Apologies - should have been "three figure numbers with a middle 0 /only/', as I gather Pug hadn't annexed numbers with a terminating 0 - I have no idea why, incidently.

On thinking about it, the Pug-getting-all y0x numbers dosn't fit with Bristol marketing the 400-409 series, which must have overlapped with the Pug y0x series by the end. Maybe Pug were unwilling to offend a firm which had attack aeroplanes in easy reach. Come to think of it, that may explain the SAAB 900...

Saab numbered their models sequentially. So the Saab 91 was the "Safir" (link here:

), the next thing on the designboard was the Saab 92 ( ) Once they got into cars, they reserved the 2-digit 9x range for them. The 99 turned into the 900. By then marketing folks were in charge rather then engineers, so it got a bit wodgy and we ended up with 9-3 and 9-5 which have only vague meanings relative to the original naming scheme.

Yes, I do believe that the marketing people looked at the BMW models and said: This 9 competes with the 3 series so let's call it a 9-3. That one competes with the 5 series, so 9-5. If not intentional, what a huge coincidence, eh?

The new naming 9-3 and 9-5 is a bit ugly IMO, it doesn't even match what is written on the cars, that's more like 9 with a smaller 3 or 5 hovering above, easily seen as 93 and 95, or perhaps it is 729 and 59049? Hence, total confusion. Added to that is that 900 and 9-3 models straddles between different shapes.

BTW, an exercise for all of you (not too difficult). Prove that 9 raised to an odd positive power will always have 9 as the last digit.

Really interesting stuff guys. Thanks for all the replies.

Particularly interesting what you said Johannes, about the 9-3 and 900. I have noticed that it's quite remarkably difficult to tell the difference between an early 9-3 and a late 900. Is it effectively the same car, but Saab just decided to re-badge it?

There were a few other changes, but the sheet metal was essentially untouched. Here:

Hehhehehehee!

Try typing "9" followed by "^" followed by "5" and you will get 9^5 in most news clients (I use Thunderbird), a bit more realistic than the 9-5 notification

In the days of mainframe computers, it was quite common to use large numbers for their naming. There were IBM/360, Univax 1100 and Unisys ES7000, all to be outdone the fictive HAL 9000 from the film '2001'. Possibly, some of the glamour of the computer industry (at the time) rubbed off on the naming of cars, such as my CSE 9000 :-)

9^5

(from Thunderbird)

Sumbitch, it worked. It just showed the three characters when I was typing it in.

:-)