Rally is the type of sport that pushes both the drivers and their cars to their limits. Last week we’ve talked to Mike White about his journey to becoming a rally driver in America, but we haven’t really touched upon his car — the highly modded 1984 SAAB 900.

This time around, we’re digging deep into the mods and the often ingenious solutions that Mike and his team at RallyHo! Motorsports came up with while preparing the car for rallying.

Not Your Regular Rally Car

To call a rally car “regular” feels awkward, to say the least. These vehicles often share the bodywork with their commercial analogs, while everything else is completely different underneath.

Yet, modern rally cars seen on WRC stages around the globe, are something you can put together in your garage. All you need is enough money to get the right parts, and enough mechanical know-how to put it all together.

As Mike put it during our hours-long conversation, “you can buy everything you need to turn a Ford Fiesta ST into a rally car”, and he’s right.

You can get anything for that car, including the WRC body kit, a complete stage-ready crate engine, a sequential gearbox, suspension parts, you name it.

None of that is true for the 1984 SAAB 900. Bar a select few components that had to be sourced in the second hand market, everything on Mike’s car had to be designed, tested, and manufactured. The amount of R&D that went into building a rally SAAB 900 is why that car is anything but your regular rally car.

The Engine

The best way to start peeling the great many layers this car has is to look under the hood. The car was originally fitted with a naturally aspirated, 8-valve, 2.0-liter engine that has since been replaced.

Mike and his team went for a slightly more modern 16-valve version of the same engine, only to finally get a 2.1-liter B212 NA motor in there.

Aside from the T5 engine management system, and a custom header, this B212 is bone stock. Mike and the team have decided to focus their attention elsewhere, although there are always plans on how to make the power plant of their car more competitive in the future.

When asked why not use a turbo engine, Mike noted that: “a turbo, or a higher displacement engine, would move us into a different class.”

Per Mike’s own words, the car is currently one of the most underpowered vehicles in their class.

“It’s a momentum car,” he noted, “We have to drive faster through the corners than a high-horsepower or all-wheel drive car that can accelerate faster out of those corners. We have to carry more speed and then maintain momentum as we lack the torque to get back up to speed.”

Transmission Mods

The gearbox in this SAAB is an interesting piece of SAAB’s rally history. It’s a 4-speed manual that was developed by SAAB Sport & Rally — SAAB’s in-house performance team that had built competition cars for various motorsports.

“This particular gearbox has been built over the past 20 or so years,” Mike noted. “It’s one of the Sport & Rally gear sets that came into the country back in the ‘70s”

No documents exist to back it up, but the gear set came into the states at a time when several very competitive cars were being built…including one for Ola Strömberg — the legendary Swedish rally car hero.

“The gear set has been handed down from one SAAB team to another, and was used in different gearboxes from time to time,” said Mike. “I got it from a SAAB rally team that was leaving the sport many years ago. Later, I’ve managed to find a matching Sport & Rally ring and pinion set that lowers all the gear ratios significantly.”

Then came the factory LSD that he got from a local SAAB dealer in Maine. Like most things on this car, that LSD has a story of its own.

“It was literally the doorstop for their bathroom door in their shop,” Mike remembers. “I bugged them to sell it to me for a long time, and they’ve finally sold it to my wife who walked in there and said she wanted to get it for my birthday”

Alongside these rare pieces of Swedish automotive legacy, the RallyHo! Motorsports team had also done a number of matching mods to the rest of the transmission components. One notable mod is the transmission oil cooler and cooler pump.

“We worked with Scanwest Autosport out in Seattle, run by Rob Waldon, on some rally modified inner drivers for the transmission and later/larger diameter axles. Rob rallied in the ’90s and was sponsored by Saab here in the states.” Mike added. “Decoding what axles were the right ones, and what to upgrade to over the past 2 weeks has required the help of a lot of folks.”

RallyHo! Motorsports had also reached out to Jonah Erikson from Fix Auto, who supplied a crucial axle that Rob Waldon needed to put together an entire kit for the team. Our own Dean Bergeron pitched in as well, digging through parts numbers and making sure that the right parts are finding their way onto Mike’s SAAB 900.

Reinventing the Suspension

Figuring out the suspension on this car was arguably one of the more demanding parts of this entire project. The stock configuration wasn’t working for Mike and his team. They wanted to beef up the shocks. To address this, the team went for a set of larger diameter Bilstein 46 mm shocks.

However, the new front and rear shocks were both the same length. This was a problem seeing that SAAB 900 stock rear shocks are some 4-5 inches longer than the ones in the front.

“We got the same shocks, front and rear, with different valving, and then we fabricated upper and lower mounts on both the front and the rear,” Mike said. “The front mounts being the most convoluted, because we had to raise the upper mount 3 inches higher, which meant cutting through the engine bay and fabricating some really beefy mounts that lock into the roll cage”

Although fabricating mods and bolting them onto a roll cage sounds unusual, Mike and the team had spent a lot of time with an experienced racing suspension consultant.

“He had us do literally hours and hours of measurements, bounce tests, spring rate calculations, to come up with what he thought would be an improvement over our existing setup,” Mike noted.

Each piece of this setup had to be tested for endurance and performance. The team has left enough room for suspension tuning as well. There are different bump stops and other suspension components that can be used to get the suspension just right.

The hope is that all of these efforts result in a car that drives better, is capable of handling rough stages, and one that jumps better.

“If I need another shock, I can order the custom part number and within a couple of weeks I will have that shock with my valving arrive at my door”, Mike says. Not many people in or out of the sport can say the same.

All Custom Brakes

Brakes on Mike’s 1984 SAAB 900 are completely custom. Considering the sheer mass of the vehicle and the gruesome conditions of rallying, stock brakes simply weren’t up to the task. The only two things that are stock are the brake rotors and the brake pedal. Everything else had to be replaced.

The team had installed a whole new set of brake lines, aftermarket master cylinder, Wilwood Racing 4-piston calipers, and more.

The RallyHo! Motorsports team had also ditched the quirky mechanical handbrake that engaged the front wheels. Its replacement came in the form of a custom hydraulic handbrake system that engaged the rear wheels instead, thus making it actually useful on a rally stage.

“As far as braking is concerned, that car is an incredibly heavy braking car,” Mike said. “It will slow down really, really quickly.”

A robust braking system is something that Mike insisted on when the team moved away from their previous car, the SAAB 99.

“Brake fade was one of the issues that I’ve dealt with in my old SAAB 99, with stock brakes and a front handbrake.” Mike remembers, “I was constantly running out of brakes, and dealing with brake fade at the end of long stages.”

His current car features a braking system that solved all of those issues and made it possible to bring all that mass under control.

Bodywork Reinforcements

Despite being made of high-quality Swedish steel, the stock car was not fit for rallying. The unibody had to be strengthened in key areas, so it could handle various mud, gravel, and tarmac stages. For one, they had to reinforce the subframe that held the engine and transmission in place.

After having to deal with a cracked transmission case/oil pan, it became clear that a new, fabricated sub-frame had to be installed, along with a brace that would physically protect the transmission from any future impacts.

In addition to a beefy skid plate, Mike’s is now capable of taking on the treacherous mud and gravel tracks spread across the country.

Wheels

The wheels that can be found on Mike’s SAAB bring an interesting story of their own. The team is running a set of Minilite wheels, as well as Shelby Minilite replicas.

Back in the ‘70s, SAAB had approached Minilite, a UK company that made wheels, to design and produce a wheel that SAAB could use in motorsports.

Then, when SAAB North America ran out of Minilite’s products, Carroll Shelby (yes, that Shelby), offered to step in. He manufactured a replica of the wheel to fill in the gap. That being said, finding additional wheels is proving to be an issue for everyone, including Mike.

These are becoming rare nowadays, especially if you’re looking for a mint condition set.

What’s Next?

Mike’s SAAB 900 is probably the most heavily modified 900 in the country. However, the team at RallyHo! Motorsports isn’t done yet. There are plans for further suspension tuning, which should put the car right where they want it in terms of handling.

The team is also planning on getting more power behind those front wheels sometime in the future. Right now, the car is being prepared for the New England Forest Rally, where it will be put through its paces.

Stay tuned for another interview with White after the race is over. We’re looking forward to getting Mike’s impressions of the race, the car, and more.