It was the fantastic roadholding that gave the advantage. We had only 55bhp, so you had to keep your foot in

Light weight. Front-wheel drive. Super traction. Crews brought up on a stolid diet of heavy and inflexible Sunbeam Alpines on crossplies could hardly be expected to appreciate that this combination was a winning one, especially in loose or slippery conditions.

But the Scandinavians did, and also understood that front-wheel drive doesn’t have to mean understeer, especially when you help the rear end round with a dab of the middle pedal. Especially when the right one is still planted to the floor. Hello left-foot braking, a technique still widely in use today. Couple that with the throaty whine of a ring-ding-ding two-stroke at full extension, and you’ve got a device that must have mystified as many as the Chaparral fan car.

‘It was the fantastic roadholding that gave it the advantage,’ says Erik Carlsson, of the cars that took him to three consecutive RAC Rally victories, 1960-’63, benefiting from the new use of short, slippery and intense special stages in the forests. ‘We only had 55bhp so you had to keep your foot in as much as you can, but they were light too, under 1000kg – even with me in it!’

Erik’s Saabs also won the Acropolis Rally in ’61, the Monte Carlo in ’62 and ’63 and countless others including second overall in the African Safari Rally of 1964. He was leading the 1963 rally by 93 minutes from his nearest competitor when a collision with an anteater put him out. But he remains proudest of his second place in the Liege-Sofia-Liege Rally, essentially a 2000-mile road race, against the might of Mercedes-Benz, Citroen, BMC, Porsche and Ford. And it shouldn’t be forgotten that Pat Moss, one of Britain’s most successful rally drivers and later Erik’s wife, had numerous victories driving two-stroke Saabs including the 1964 European Ladies Rally Championship.

‘We had no power under 3-4000rpm,’ explains Erik, ‘and when we finished with the two-strokes in 1968 there was nothing under 5500rpm. The factory always said not to go over 7000, but on the Monte in ’63 on one section, third was too high and second too low. I know I used 9000rpm, but it ran nice and sweet, and we got home.’

Hustling the bulbous Saab is hard work and it needs to be kept on the boil, as Jim Valentine, owner of this historic rally replica, confirms. ‘On hillclimbs, fuel consumption goes down to less than 2 miles per gallon. It is a challenge to drive having a freewheel clutch so no engine braking effect, a fierce limited-slip differential and a column change, apart from only producing power over 4000rpm with a peak of just 65bhp - we usually pack sandwiches for events with long straights.’

Left-foot-braking, however, wasn’t usually needed, says the maestro: ‘We used it on the twin-cylinder 92s but not the 96 unless you really needed to help keep the back out. You could use the handbrake – but that was the last thing you did if you had no bloody grip. If you used the handbrake into a hairpin you lost so much speed.

‘I always used the freewheel, even when we could lock it – there was no engine braking with the 55bhp two-stroke anyway, and it made it easier to change gear. And yes, I used the clutch – most of the time…’

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