Oscars 2022 winner ‘Drive My Car’ brings back memories of Saab 900 Turbo, a car made by plane-maker

Japanese drama ‘Drive My Car’ directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and adapted from a short story by Haruki Murakami has won the Academy Award for the best international feature film. The story centres Hidetoshi Nishijima, who develops a friendship with his young chauffeur.

The chauffeur drives a red-coloured Saab 900 Turbo, bringing back the fond memories of the forgotten car. The Saab 900 is often considered the Tesla of its time, built keeping future technologies in mind.

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However, just like Tesla, the Saab was bought only by non-mainstream buyers just like electric vehicles of today’s day and age. The highlight, though, is that Saab used to be plane maker infusing aircraft building tech into carmaking, hence pushing Saab 900 Turbo to a different league altogether.

Saab AB is a Swedish aerospace and defence company, founded in 1937 that later forayed into automobiles from 1947 until 1990. The now defunct Saab made the Saab 900 from 1978 until 1998 in two generations. The first gen "classic" or "OG" Saab 900 was based on the Saab 99 chassis.

The second or 'new' generation Saab 900 was built on GM's GM2900 platform. The car, in its time, offered new-age features like Automatic Climate Control (ACC), leather interiors, wood-trimmed dashboards, Sensonic' clutch automatic gearbox, Night Panel instrument panel among others.

The model seen in the movie seems like a 5-door hatchback version of the car with a Turbo engine. It seems like the car is powered by a  2.0 L (1985 cc) B201 Intercooled turbo producing 140–155 PS at 5000 rpm and 235 Nm peak torque.

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