Saab is best known for being a bit alternative. In the company's glory years, if you wanted something different to an efficient but characterless German machine, and not something characterful but inefficient from England, then the nearest Saab dealership was where you'd find your match.

Ursaab Saab 99 Saab 900 Saab 9-3 Bertone Mantide Saab PhoeniX concept

Saab's automotive saga began way back in 1944. The first car was codenamed project 92. It took three years to develop, but once it was finished the Saab 92001 (or Ursaab) was something quite special. The Ursaab's design was heavily influenced by Saab's roots in aircraft manufacturing. The car had the lowest drag coefficient of any car at the time thanks to its streamlined, teardrop shaped body. By 1949 the Ursaab was in full production. Officially known as the Saab 92, over 20,000 examples were sold throughout the first half of the 1950s.

Through the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s Saab kept on producing slightly odd, but well designed and engineered, vehicles. There were cars like the 96 - of which over half a million were made - and groundbreaking new models like the Saab 99 which heralded many of the trademark Saab design cues we all recognize today. 1978 saw the introduction of the iconic Saab 900, nearly one million were sold and it remains one of Saab's best known vehicles.

During Saab's formative years it always did things a bit different to everyone else. It was almost as if the designers had never been in a car before. So instead of just saying; "Oh, well everyone else puts the ignition on the steering column, we'll just stick it there too." They ended up going; "Hey guys, lets try putting the ignition between the front seats, that might work well!" - and it did. This kind of free thinking led to a huge number of innovations and world firsts.

Saab was the first company to fit seatbelts as standard, the first company to introduce headlight washers and wipers, the first to develop heated seats, the first to fit a passenger compartment air filter, and the first to design an impact-absorbing, self-repairing bumper. The list goes on.

Saab's were never sold in the same sort of numbers as BMW, Mercedes or Audi. But they were respected as a brand, and they oozed a kind of classy, quirky chicness you couldn't get from anyone else at the time.

Sadly the good times couldn't last forever, and during Saab's 20 years of GM management (1990 - 2010) it slowly lost all the attributes which had made it a popular brand amongst those in-the-know, and its cult status gradually faded too. Initially GM steered Saab back into profit - mainly due to the popularity of the new 900 introduced in 1994. However slowly Saab started to become more and more mainstream. They weren't being innovative and they weren't breaking the mold. They were just becoming stale.

The company hit rock bottom during the mid 00s thanks in part to GM's obsession with badge-engineered vehicles. Most models were just based on old vehicle platforms from other brands. The 9-3 was based on the Opel Vectra, the 9-2X was based on the Subaru Impreza and the 9-7X was based on the Chevrolet Trailblazer. All of them were worse and more expensive than the cars they were based on.

Skip on to the present day and there's plenty of promise on the horizon for Saab. GM sold Saab as part of their streamlining process, and now the company is under the control of Koenigsegg - who have a couple of things in common with Saab. They're both Swedish for a start, and they are both at their best when they're being a bit unusual. Add to that the fact they both designed to appeal to a 'certain type' of person and the match seems almost perfect. One can deal with the oddball supercar clientele, while the other sorts cars for the rest of us.

However the real promise of a return to Saab's unusual and hopefully glorious past is its new design director, Jason Castriota. Castriota has made a name for himself over the last decade by designing some of the most striking supercars on the planet. Take for example the Maserati Birdcage and the Bertone Mantide - both as crazy and brilliant as each other. He's also had a wealth of experience in working for two of Italy's most famous design studios - Pininfarina and Stile Bertone - so he knows how to design a pretty car. In addition, Castriota will be designing the next generation of Saabs as a free agent through his own design company. That means he will find it easier to tell the accountants what they can do with their calculators, and the board of management won't hold as much power over his creativity compared to a regular in-house designer.

Saab say that the next generation 9-3 could be headed to the showrooms as early as 2012. While at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show Saab pulled the covers off their aptly named PhoeniX concept. The timing is too close to be coincendence. The PhoeniX will - with a couple of extra doors and minus the little winglets - mutate into the new 9-3.

So Saab, with a little bit of luck, has been reborn.