Development engineers Ricardo designed the triumph/saab engine and saab bought them in wholesale initially in 1.7 form then in 1.85 size, saab paid Ricardo a premium for the better made engines but they still got fed up with reliability issues so the design was bought and Saab made it their own, strengthening it significantly. In traditional Saab way, they took the evolution route, electronic fuel injection in '73 (downgraded to mechanical a year later due to cost issues), 16valve head in '77 for rally purposes (mass production by '84), turbocharging also by '77, first to design proper modern style engine management by '82, and lots of other bits to send you all to sleep. Basically by the time the 9000 ended production it was unrecognisable, having grown to a 2.3 with counter rotating balencer shafts. It's still in use however in the 9-5 (cos the 9-5 is basically an updated
9k) where as the 9-3 uses a Saab strengthened version of the GM powerplant. GM are slowly showing the real reason why they bought saab, knowledge. They've 'reassigned' most of the engineers and closing the swedish factory, for example take the Vauxhall Signum 2.0t(not the best looking vehicle): Saab designed seats, saab designed trionic engine management (they even advertise it as such in the brochure), saab designed rear suspension, and the saab modded engine. It's also something like 5 grand less than the equivalent 9-3Ken
Saabfreak
900 Turbo8 - 9000 CSE Turbo 16