We got a pleasant surprise from Ivan Stamenkovic, a 38 year old software engineer and car design enthusiast living in Belgrade, Serbia.
Serbia’s already known to SAAB planet as a big stronghold of SAAB survivors and enthusiasts, but seems like it has some design enthusiasts as well. We’ll let him describe his work in his own words:
“In not so distant future, SAAB makes a big comeback with a high performance car for the road, in contemporary electric category, and makes it the coolest thing, like it did with the turbo in the 1980’s with 900t. The name of the car is “900e”! Mass produced electric car for the drivers and the road, not for the racetrack, not the gazillion horce power hypercar for zero to 60 pissing contests or billionaires garage galleries. Supersafe with all that jazz!!” That was the idea behind this concept car design.
My SAAB story
3 years ago, I was lucky to get a present from the coolest uncle in the world in a form of one bluish grey 93 SS 2.0t 2002 Vector model. The very first drive on the highway I’ve experienced the uphill drive without losing momentum even though I haven’t revved up the engine nowhere near the high rpms, I figured out what’s the torque for the first time very vividly! And the feeling of immortal safety in it and why people get crazy about all that in relation to SAABs. I learned the SAABs model family tree very fast after this and got hooked to its philosophy, or what I’ve picked up from it.
Why 900t?
As a car design nerd, I had that weird looking, Dart Vader charisma car in the back of my mind for a long time, but this time I connected the dots and how it fits into the whole SAAB design language and how it probably even originated it. 900t, one of the most iconic SAABs and cars in general! That’s the answer why 900t in particular inspired me to commit some 100 hours to my 15 year abandoned hobby and try and make a contemporary reboot concept homage to it.
Started it from the rear end, obviously, I haven’t softened it’s backside design, I emphasized it, made it more like a fastback.
Profile view looks powerful, robust and safe to me, kind of like today’s airplanes. “Born from Jets”, right?!
To make it look as crazy in 2020, as 900t was in 1979 or 1980’s, I played a lot with unexpected design and performance (I would like if they are) details. That’s why those side air ducts that compress the side air flows and shoot them to the spoiler. In my (thirty)8 year old brain that means more downforce at high speeds or just less drag on the low. Or instead of radiator grill, that electric cars don’t need, obviously, air duct that combines the air flows to make less drag on the windshield. Or those spoiler-like side mirrors. Or turbo fan-ish parts on the rims for brakes cooling. Are there any aerodynamics doctors in the room? Whether any of these makes any sense or it doesn’t please comment if you know about aerodynamics.
I’ve remodelled every part of this concept car for about 5 times now, it’s superhard to make a worthy homage to such legendary design, and I’ll never be sure I’m there.
Feel free to follow my Behance and instagram profiles if you like, thank you!
