Saab Car Museum

The official museum of Saab automobile history, covering 1947 to the company's collapse

The Saab Car Museum occupies one of the old NOHAB locomotive factory buildings in the Innovatum area of Trollhättan, a kilometre from the town centre. It holds around 120 cars spanning the full history of Saab production from 1947 to 2011, of which about 70 are on permanent display — the original Ursaaben prototype, standard production models, limited editions, rally cars, and concept vehicles that were never built.

The museum tells the story of a company that was genuinely eccentric: an aircraft manufacturer that decided to build cars as a sideline, ended up making some of the most distinctive vehicles in European motoring, and then was sold, neglected, and finally killed by General Motors over the course of twenty years. For Saab enthusiasts this is a pilgrimage site; for anyone interested in industrial design or Swedish corporate history, it is fascinating in a melancholy way. The museum includes a small cinema showing archive footage.

things to do museum
A story
Saab's first car, the Saab 92001 (known as "Ursaaben"), was designed by a team of aircraft engineers who had never built a car before. They approached it like an aircraft: aerodynamically efficient, with a two-stroke engine that could run on most available fuels. The result looked like nothing else on the road in 1947 and drove the same way. The original prototype is in the museum.