Thunder: Björn Envall, the godfather of the Saab 900

This is a Dutch documentary made by Godfried de Vries and Leo Alexander Schlangen. As the title suggests, it is all about the Saab 900 and its main designer Björn Envall. This documentary was filmed by George van Wensveen and was made in the summer of 2010 when they visited with Envall in Sweden.

It also features other members of the Saab 900 team. The documentary shows 10 of them were invited to Envall's home and they had not seen each other since 1993, the last year of the Saab 900.

In the video, Envall notes "We never understood we should make profit with the car. We know dealers made profit, factories made profit but we never talked about it. We didn't have the big pressure on doing a new color every year or a new car every 5 years. We have done the utmost with our resources.
". And that says everything about the essence of the brand and perhaps its ultimate downfall.

Envall was the main designer at Saab in the 70s and 80s. The Saab 99, 900 and 9000 were created under his guidance and a million Saab 900 were sold.

This documentary was shown in the VIP room at the "We are Saab" event at the the Valkenburg airbase in the Netherlands on January 15th and many viewers were very positive about it.

The DVD with the 25-minute documentary can be ordered by sending an email to the address on their website and costs €10. The trailer shows part is in English with Dutch subtitles. I imagine most of it will be in Dutch as well besides the interviews.