Mr Turbo

摘要

Although he didn't realise it at the time, Olle Granlund was part of a team of pioneers. The engineer started in Saab's powertrain department in 1965, moving from Volvo around the same time as Per Gillbrand, the father of turbocharging.rnSaab had hired people from Volvo to introduce a four-stroke engine in the Saab 96, and in 1970 Gillbrand started the engineers looking into turbo engines, aiming to create a better class of car that could compete with BMW or Mercedes in the US. Even though around half of Saab's cars were selling across the Atlantic, the four-cylinder engine was not powerful enough for a market that ran on six or eight cylinders.rnA lack of installation space in its car meant that Saab didn't want to get into V6s and V8s. It toyed with the idea of buying in an engine, but decided its own was a good enough place to start. In 1973 BMW built a turbocharged version of its compact coupe, the 2002, but its boosting was at the top end, not the mid-range, andrnits very high performance made it unsuitable for everyday use.