2002 Saab 9-3 2 Door Convertible Automatic 2.0 Engine Turbo on 2040-cars

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Spyker and Youngman sign deal, plan to build D8 SUV and Phoenix-based range

It appears Spyker is strengthen its ties and carmaking ability with Chinese carmaker Youngman. This comes in the wake of the brand's latest dealings with a $3 billion lawsuit against General Motors regarding the demise of Saab.
Youngman is reportedly investing €10,000,000 ($12.5M USD) for a 29.9-percent stake in the company. The shares are being sold for €0.05 (6.3 cents) each, representing a fully diluted share. Youngman has said it will not take on more than the 29.9-percent stake.
Additionally, Youngman will invest €25,000,000 ($31M) for the development of an all-new Spyker vehicle, called the D8 P2P, named for the Peking-to-Paris rally. The vehicle had been shown as a concept by Spyker previously, but things had been quiet since then. It appears Spyker will now build the uniquely styled D8 Concept shown above. The vehicle is to launch at the end of 2014 and carry a price of $250,000 per vehicle.

Celebrate Volvo's 89th birthday with some neat facts

Volvo, arguably Sweden's best-known non-ABBA export, will celebrate the big 9-0 next year. The company has always operated somewhat under the radar, but it has its share of stories to tell despite an image formed by decades of solid, safe, and sensible cars. To celebrate the occasion, here are five lesser-known facts about Sweden's last remaining car brand. 1. It opened North America's first foreign car plant. Idyllic Halifax was a small fishing city of about a quarter-million in the early 1960s when Volvo arrived and became the first import brand to build cars en masse in North America. American consumers on the East Coast developed a fondness for the Volvo Amazon line in the late 1950s, leading Volvo to seek out a plant in the Americas. Halifax ponied up incentives, allowing Volvo to take advantage of a pact eliminating tariffs on cars built and exported between the United States and Canada. Volvo built cars there until the end of 1998, when it said its facility was no longer viable compared to larger factories in Europe. That brings us to The Netherlands, where Volvo bought a quirky, innovative automaker that once sold a car called the Daffodil (which was actually its luxury model). 2. You can thank Volvo for CVTs – even though it doesn't use them. Volvo wasn't interested in picking flowers. It wanted the automotive arm of truck manufacturer DAF, which would include its assembly plant, its Renault engines, and the first mainstream application of the CVT gearbox. Volvo acquired DAF's car business over the course of a few years in the early 1970s and, in typical Volvo safety-oriented style, it slapped big bumpers and head restraints on the little DAF 66 and rebadged it as the Volvo 66. The Dutch assembly plant would grow to include a partnership with Mitsubishi in the early '90s. Today, it operates as NedCar and builds Mini Coopers for BMW. Volvo is no longer involved in NedCar or DAF (which sold its CVT division to Bosch, by the way), but its acquisition of DAF helped ensure the success of CVTs. Ironically, even though Volvo's investment helped make CVTs mainstream, the Swedish automaker's affair with them was brief, and today it utilizes only conventional automatics. 3. The Swedish carmakers were pals. Over its 89 years, Volvo has been closely connected to a number of automakers – most notably Ford, which ran the company for a decade, and its current owner Geely. But Volvo is most closely linked to its longtime competitor, Saab.

1999 Saab 9-3 Viggen is a Swede worth remembering on MotorWeek

Today, Saab survives in name only after a protracted series of bankruptcies and attempted comebacks with new owners. At the turn of the millennium, however, the brand was still able to make some great cars, though. MotorWeek is showing off one of its very best in this vintage review for the 1999 9-3 Viggen. The jet-inspired Viggen was the pinnacle of everything Saab's engineers could do at the time. Starting with the standard 9-3, the suspension was hunkered down to improve handling and lower bodywork was added for better aerodynamics. Now that the exterior looked the part, the 2.3-liter turbocharged four-cylinder was tweaked to make 225 horsepower and 252 pound-feet of torque. While that output may not sound hugely impressive by modern standards, those were strong numbers in the day, and the following model year made even more power. After some time behind the wheel of the VIggen, MotorWeek came away quite impressed with this Swede. While the Viggen might not have offered the full capability of high-performance, European contemporaries like the BMW M3, Saab really showed its strengths with this model.