SEATS

At the introduction, the 99 seats were quite simple. No headrests, but the cushions were firm and adequately sized for large (Elk sized?) scandinavians. Try sitting in a Japanese or Italian car, and you'll see what I mean. No offense, small Japanese and Italian people need small seats. But I dont fancy sitting in a ¾ scale seat.
In the late sixties/early seventies, most cars had front seats of the "spring steel" type, a skeleton of steel rods housing coil springs, and clad with padded fabric.
The Saab seats were of the "foam cushion" type. A moulded one-piece cushion is suspended on top of a stretched rubber mat. Today (nearly) all cars have "foam cushion" type front seats, the only company who still clings on to the "spring steel" type, is Mercedes.

Early 99 seats	Elk sized Scandinavians	Spring steel seat	Foam cushion seat

Incidentally, Recaro, independent maker of the worlds finest seats, <www.recaro.de> has always made their seats of the "foam cushion" type. And several houndred thousand kilometres in various Mercedeses (taxi) has tought me and most of my collegues that the only way to sit comfortably in any Mercedes is to install a Recaro seat.

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Apart from the normal fore / aft and recline adjusters, the 99 driver's seat had a four-position tilt / height adjusting mechanisme.

Sadly, the ingeniously rear seatbench height adjusting mechanisme on the Saab 96 was not carried over. The fold-down mechanisme, however, was.
A rear seat fold-down mechanisme was no novelty, estate cars has had it for ages. But in the late sixties, it was not common for a saloon car to have it. Nowadays it is

As of m72 models, electric heating was standard equipment on all Saab 99 drivers seats. Controlled by a thermostat, and no switch, the heating was fully automatic. If it was cold outside, the heating came on with the ignition, and was switched off when an adequate temperature was reached. When I say adequate, I mean exactly that. Not all of todays car manufacturers has understood the philosophy behind electric heated seats, when you switch them on they'll fry your balls off!

By now, there were headrests too. Large tubular affairs, which allowed the rear seat passengers to see out the windscreen. (Unlike the other Swedish car manufacturer, who used two solid padded transverse "planks" for headrests)
The front seats from m74, and up to m79 are referred to as "doughnut"-style seats. m80 and onwards are called "breadloaf"-style. Look at the headrest, and you'll see why. Apart from the headrest, the m80 seats were similar to the older ones, the same cloth material was used. From m81 models, new materials, colors and a different pattern was applied.

Tubular affairs	What Volvo used	Doughnuts...	...in tasty colors!	Breadloaf

And new rear seat headrest! From now on, saloons and hatchbacks used the same rear headrest. These new style rear headrest will not fit an old type Combi Coupe seatback. The latch mechanisme is in the way.

As of m84 models, the front seat frames were lower, so the driver was allowed 2 cm more headroom. And the inferiour rubber mat was replaced by a steel wire mesh mat. This ended the front-seat-sagging problem. Somewhere along the way, the exellent rear seat passenger view was lost, and that other Swedish car manufacturer had improved their's, and caught up with Saab. And in more areas than this.

A broken rubber...	Cant happen here.	GLE interior	Leather interior	m80 seat

In 1981 the seat anchor points and brackets, on both the 900 and the 99 were changed, so 1980 was the only year with the new breadloaf-style seats in combination with the old rails and brackets. The rails and brackets are different and will not interchange, ...without cutting, grinding, drilling and welding. Which I did, so my m78 99 now has seats from an m83 (I think) 900.
Here's how I did it: SEATS, MODIFIED