Why Saab Hid Your Ignition Key Between the Seats (And Made You Pick Reverse to Remove It)
For decades, Saab drivers groped around the centre console for the key slot. The reasons were smarter than they looked.
Climb into almost any car from the last half-century and your right hand goes straight to the steering column to start it. Climb into a classic Saab and you'll pat the column, look confused, and then find the key slot down on the floor between the front seats, next to the handbrake.
Saab didn't just do this to be awkward. It looks awkward, sure, but the reasons hold up.
Where it started
The floor-mounted ignition arrived with the Saab 99, unveiled in 1967. The Saab Museum's innovations timeline lists it alongside the 99's other safety features of the time: a collapsible "double-jointed" safety steering column and a body with crumple zones front and rear.
Reason one: your knees
In a frontal crash, a driver's knees can be thrown forward into the steering column, which is exactly where most cars put a hard metal key sticking out of a lock. Saab's own explanation for the layout was to move it out of the way and cut the risk of knee injury. Down on the console, there's nothing there to hit.
Reason two: it's a plane thing
Saab started out building aircraft, and the company liked to point that out. Its press material described the console location as good ergonomics borrowed from aircraft cockpit design: put the starting control near the other main controls, next to the gear lever and handbrake. In a cockpit, that's where your hand already is.
Reason three: the reverse-gear lock
This is where it gets properly weird. On manual Saabs, you could only take the key out with the car in reverse. Pull the key and the gear lever stayed locked in reverse until you put it back. On automatics, the car had to be in Park.
So instead of a steering-column lock, the key locked the gearbox. A thief couldn't drive the car away without the key. Owners also point out that the car was hard to tow away, since Saabs were front-wheel drive and the locked transmission held the driven wheels. It also meant the steering could never lock up on you if the key got knocked mid-drive.
A family trait
The between-the-seats key outlived the 99 and became a Saab signature in later cars like the 900, 9-3 and 9-5. The big exception was the Saab 9000, which shared its platform with Fiat, Lancia and Alfa Romeo sedans and put its ignition on the column like everyone else. Saab owners still haven't really forgiven it.
Why we love it
The Saab ignition is our favourite kind of weird: it looks like change for the sake of change, and it turns out to be a carefully argued design. It also turned every Saab handover into a little ritual. "Where's the key go?" "Down there." "Why?" "Pull up a chair."
Want to know what one actually costs? The Saab 900 (classic) Quirk Database entry logs real auction sold prices, each linked to its result.
Fact-check pit lane
Figures in this piece were checked against:
