Saab Turbo Motorsport Gallery
Per Eklund (left) won the European Rallycross Championship in a four-wheel drive Saab 9-3 with 550 hp. For the 2000 championship his car is even more powerful at 600 hp from a 2.0 litre Saab block and head! But the icing on the cake must be the 9-3 version in which Per competed in the traditional Pikes Peak hillclimb this year, and won his class in his very first PP outing! As the Pikes Peak regulations -unlike those in rallycross- don't specify an inlet restrictor, max power was up to an unbelievable 750 hp -again using an original 2.0 litre Saab cylinder block and head!
Per Eklund and Trollspeed also built a couple of 600 hp, 4x4 9-3's for use in the 2000 Race Of Champions. At the ending of the motorsport year all the great winners are invited to compete against each other. There is a mix of champions such as World Rallycross Champion, European Rallycross Champion as well as Pikes Peak winners. On this years starting list competitors such as Marcus Grönholm, Larry Regland, Tommi Mäkinen, Didier Auriol,Colin McRae, Carlos Sainz, Björn Waldegård and Stig Blomqvist were to be found.. The Race of Champions is a tandem race, i.e.two drivers compete side by side and the first one to cross the finishing line wins. The drivers used the two cars Per built for the race and lots of parts are waiting in the depot just in case.
You can see the 9-3 's in action on these video's of the event.
Another household name when it comes to racing Saabs is Abbott Racing from the UK. Ed and Lionel Abbott had been successfully racing Fords for several years when they were asked to build a car for the British Saab 900 Turbo Challenge in 1987, with which they were immediately winning races. In 1992, the Abbott team won the British Saloon Car Championship with a 9000 CS 2.3 Turbo, and in 1994 they did it again with the 900 Turbo pictured above. The B.A.R.C. saloon car championship went on to become a series with two-litre non-turbo engines like other European touring car series (DUTCH in Holland and DTC in Germany) the 900/9-3 2.0i that Abbott entered still proved to be consistently near the front of the pack, despite the sheer bulk of the Saab compared to the 'hot hatches' that rule 2 litre unblown saloon/touring car formats.
Left, one of the Abbott-prepared 900T8's at Snetterton, 1987; right another one at the Thruxton track, the following season. Note that the Super Inca rims don't look too bad with the hub caps off...
For several years now, the racing team of Gasparatos Automobile (formerly G + W Motorsport) have been succesfully campaigning Saab 900 and 9000 Turbo's in various motorsport events, amongst them the German endurance race series -including the Nürburgring 24h race on the famous Nordschleife- and the German Youngtimer Trophy in which they managed to p*ss off Porsche 911 Carrera drivers with an 8 valve 900T to the extent that the car was subsequently banned! The pics here were taken during a sprint race event at the Oschersleben track, September 2000. Above the 9000T, below the 900T8 in full flight.
An underbonnet view of the 900T. Note that it all looks reasonably stock, except for the additional cold start valves welded to the inlet manifold and acting as a 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th injector...Nico Gasparatos says the engine has about 240 hp in its current state of tune, albeit with a whopping 460 Nm of torque on tap!
The engine bay and interior of the 9000T run by Gasparatos. The little box on the left of the dashboard is a factory APC diagnostic thingy with switches to bypass the knock sensor and to switch off the APC solenoid. The steering wheel was originally seen on factory rally 99T's as well as in the 100 pre-production 99 Turbo's of 1977...
A fair number of our Turbo! friends in the USA still race their classic 900 turbo's almost every weekend of the motorsport season, often having the edge over drivers of much more flash and expensive gear. They enter autocross, Solo II or even go for a bit of rallying, as demonstrated here by Sarah K. Robinson and her '87 900T "Ruffin" who are literally leaving everything behind them in a cloud of dust...
