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I wouldn't go so far to say that SAAB was ever a 'major player' in rallying. The factory's involvement stretched from the early 1950's to 1980. A good book that has the entire rallying history of the factory is "From two stroke to turbo" by Anders Tunberg. SAAB were selectively involved in rallying in that era - Eric Carlsson won the RAC Rally (Britain) in 1960, '61 and '62, Monte Carlo in, IIRC, '62 and '63, and other important rallies such as Liege, Acropolis, Sweden and Finland/1,000 Lakes. The thing to remember was that then, as always, SAAB was a very small company, and the competition department had maybe 10 employees, who often had 'day jobs' within the company. The budget was small, even by standards of the day, and SAAB would carefully pick their events, and go to ones where they had a reasonable chance of winning, ie winter events or rough events, where the durability of the car and front wheel drive handling counted for more than power. I doubt then ever competed in, say, the Tour de Corse or SanRemo! SAAB pioneered turbocharging in rallying, and the 99 Turbo was the first turbocharged car to win a world championship rally, Sweden in 1980. It was also SAAB's last win at the top level: the 4WD revolution was coming, and SAAB knew it couldn't compete with manufacturers with budgets like Audi, Ford or Lancia, so the competitions department was closed at the end of 1980. A few people, such as Per Eklund, who has been associated with SAAB on and off since the 1960's, have used SAAB's in competition since then, but it has been without official support. I doubt we will ever see SAABs rallying officially again. Next year, the WRC factory teams will be Ford, Subaru, Mitsubishi and Skoda, and this in not the market SAAB is in. Even if GM did decide to enter the WRC, it would probably be with Opel, and GM has never supported rallying officially anyway - even winning GM cars in the past, such as the Ascona, Manta and Chevette were all pushed by 'dealer' teams, and I don't think Detroit was very much in favor of it.
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