For Collectors, Saab Parts Likely to Remain Available December 30, 2011, 8:23 pm The last few decades have been rough for the few remaining automotive iconoclasts and nonconformists in the United States. In the 1970s, Citroën - which had been the patron saint of these types - left our shores, followed by Peugeot and Alfa Romeo in the early and mid-1990s. The final blow may have come with the recent announcement of the end of Saab as a going concern. Although the corpse is not even cold, the speculation has already begun on what this means for extant new Saabs (about 2,500 of which remain unsold) for which future part supplies and warranty coverage remain uncertain as of now. But for older models that have developed a cultlike following in the collector car world, perhaps not all is bleak for the newly orphaned vintage Saabs. For these cars, there remains an ample supply of rebuilt parts as well as some old stock and new reproduction items, all of which are handled outside the dealer channel by people like Chip Lamb, proprietor of West of Sweden, in Richmond, Va. Mr. Lamb says he thinks that rather than depressing prices for collectible Saabs, the attention has given a bump to values, as evidenced by the strong $15,000 price he recently received for a pristine 1970 Saab 96. Saab's back catalog of interesting older models isn't limited to the 96 and its forbears, the 2-stroke, 3-cylinder 92 and 93. The fiberglass Sonett sports car of the 1960s and 1970s is of interest to collectors, as are the later 99 Turbo and 900 SPG, both of which were pioneers in coaxing real horsepower out of small 4-cylinder engines. So even if the eccentrics will now have precious little of interest to them in the new-car-market, it seems that vintage car collectors with a taste for the odd and Scandinavian will still have old Saabs to enjoy.