SUNNY CAB; 20 years on, Saab convertible is still effervescent.(Saab-Scania of America Inc to develop Saab 9-3)

Byline: MARK VAUGHN The Saab convertible didn't start out so much as a Swedish car as it did an American invention. In the early 1980s Bob Sinclair, then-president of Saab-Scania of America, was busy trying to take the Saab brand upmarket. He wanted high-dollar cars with high-end features.

The executives over at the factory in Sweden were aiming the brand in the opposite direction-lower-dollar, and with fewer features. The Swedes offered him 1000 stripper 900 notchbacks, a "decontented two-door for low-discretionary-income markets,'' Sinclair remembers. They told him he ...

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