We’re spectating on a rally special stage. The Monte Carlo, Britain’s RAC, the Acropolis in Greece. Anywhere, it doesn’t matter which. We’re halfway up a gentle roadside embankment stamping our almost numb feet and rubbing shoulders with dozens of other rally fans, waiting. It’s dark, cold, the bottle of whiskey comes around once and we never see it again. Then, pleasantly vibed, the group we’re with goes dead quiet. Because way off in the distance is the unmistakable buzz of a two-stroke, 3-cylinder Saab 96 writhing its way through our stage.
Erik Carlsson. His six lights slice through the darkness this way and that as he sets up the car to take a sharp left-hander below us and to the right. We can just see the silhouette of the little plum red car from our hillside vantage point as it heels over alarmingly onto its two outside wheels. It seems to lurch too far over, starts to roll, the tiny 95 hp two-stroke engine still revving at precisely the same number of rpm like a hoard of crazed mosquitoes as the quirky little car rolls through a 360-degree arc and then thumps back on to all fours, its front wheels scrabbling for terra firma and acceleration. Those revs are still singing the same, uninterrupted high pitch buzz, when Erik and his Saab are off again without missing a beat. Almost as if rolling the car at that point was part of Carlsson’s strategy for taking the corner. And, of course, it was. As it was on countless other corners.
That’s why Carlsson earned himself the nickname Karlsson pÃҰtaket, which was the title of a Swedish kids’ book by Astrid Lindgren about a character called Karlsson, who lives on the roof of an apartment building. So Erik was called “On-the-roof Carlsson” because he used the strength and roundness of the Saab 96 to roll the car when it suited him and win some of the world’s greatest rallies.
Which is amazing when you consider that the Saabs Erik drove were all seriously underpowered compared to the opposition. So, if they were to do any competitive speed at all he had to keep the revs and speed as high as he could while cornering and rolling the car. And for that he developed the art of left-foot braking. He kept his right foot hard down on the accelerator as he dabbed the brake pedal so that the tail of the little Saab hung out in a controlled skid as he kept up his speed.
Erik was born in Saab’s hometown of Trollhãttan, Sweden, on March 5, 1929, and joined the company as a rally driver just after the little two-stroke, 2-cylinder in-line 92 was launched in 1950. Well over six feet tall, blonde hair slicked back, ruddy complexion, Erik made his mark in the rally department by taking the 28 hp 92 to victory in the Sweden’s 1955 Rikspokalen Rally. Two years later, he hit the big time by winning Finland’s 1000 Lakes Rally, famous for its “yumps” in which the speeding cars fly off the brow of a special stage bump and cannon through the air with all four wheels off the ground. He won that classic in the new Saab 93, really a 92 but powered by a 3-cylinder that put out 65 hp. And the Swedish and Rallye Deutschland events both fell to Carlsson’s Saab 93 in 1959.
After that, Big Erik really began to make history. On-the-Roof Carlsson turned the new 96 into Saab’s most successful rally car of all time. Co-driven by another rally great, Stuart Turner, he won Britain’s 1960 RAC Rally in the 96 and then came 2nd in that year’s Acropolis, before astounding everyone by winning the ’61 Acropolis in the car. Jaws dropped even further when he won the end-of-year RAC again, and were absolutely flabbergasted in January 1962, when he and his underpowered ugly duckling won the most prestigious rally of them all, the Monte Carlo. They roundly beat 2nd-placed German Eugon Böhringer in his robust Mercedes-Benz 220SE and Irish idol Paddy Hopkirk, who drove a Sunbeam Rapier into 3rd. Then the big tall Swede went back to the UK and beat them all over again by winning his second successive RAC Rally of Great Britain in the modest, steering-column-gearchange 96.
By now Carlsson had come from nowhere to being the man to beat, but not many made it. Some had more powerful cars like the petrol-guzzling Austin Healey 3000s, which were great in a straight line but no match for the agile little Saab 96 on Europe’s short, sharp rally stages. On-the-Roof Carlsson won the Monte Carlo Rally yet again in ’63, beating the world once more, relegating Finland’s Paoli Toivonen to 2nd place in the surprisingly effective big Citroën ID19 and Rauno Aaltonen into 3rd in a mighty Mini, a car that was about to take over the rally world.
The cutthroat Liege-Sofia-Liege Rally was a sadistically timed event over 5,000 kilometers from Liège to Sofia in Bulgaria and back again. Organized by the Royal Motor Union of Belgium to make sure every driver incurred penalty points, the Marathon de la Route, which was its official name that nobody used, was not really a rally at all but a knife-edge, balls-out race run on public roads in which no time was allowed for service. Drivers had to make up the time spent doing sissy things like tending their cars on the road; so maintenance was kept to a minimum of changing tires, refuelling and the smallest of repairs. Erik and his little Saab 96 came 2nd in this pure speed event in 1963 and 1964 and, but for an unwanted on-the-roof moment, nearly pulled off another staggering victory on the other side of the world.
That was in the 1964 East African Safari, not famed as an event for small-engined cars, which Erik led for much of its 3,100 miles before overturning in a huge pool of mud. Even so, he and co-driver Gunnar Palm rolled the rotund Saab 96 over and over until it was back on the firm ground again, accelerated off and came 2nd!
Nobody at rally headquarters believed that they rolled the car out of trouble, so after the prize-giving Erik and Gunnar invited everybody to join them outside the festival hall and they proceeded to roll the Saab over and over again. Ford tried the same thing afterwards, but ended up with a severely damaged Cortina GT Mk I!
By the time Erik had won the 1964 San Remo Rally in the 96 Sport, his Saab PR duties were beginning to eat into his time, although he did manage to win the 1967 Czech Rally in a Saab 96 V4. After that, this man with total recall of the face and name of everyone he meets, literally became Mr. Saab, representing the company at all its new product presentations, motor shows and the like across the world. Since his retirement, Saab and its subsidiaries have named several of its models after him, but it is the 96 that will always be synonymous with On-the-Roof Carlsson.
