Those wonderful wrap-around winshields! Hemmings Associate Editor David Traver Adolphus recently came across two impressive images of brand new Saab 99s taken in May 1973 at the shipping area called Fields Point in Providence, Rhode Island. These two-and four-door sedans were newly offloaded from the ships that brought them from Saab’s Swedish plants in Trollhättan, Södertälje, Linköping, Kirstenhamn and Nykoping, as well as the plant in Uusikaupunki, Finland, where they were manufactured.
These pictures were just two of countless treasures located on the National Archives website, and they represent a sliver of the 15,981 photographs that were taken on 35mm color slides and as black and white prints and negatives as part of “Documerica,” an Environmental Protection Agency project that photographically documented subjects or areas of environmental concern in America between 1972 and 1977. In addition to junkyards, industrial scenes and mining, these photos captured National Parks and Forests, beaches, mountain scenes and areas plagued by air and water pollution. These two images are credited to Hope Alexander, who was one of approximately 70 EPA-contracted professional photographers to capture these subjects.
The freshly minted Saabs contrast strongly with the massive piles of formerly automotive scrap metal behind them, metal that the photo records indicate would soon be exported. It’s amazing to think that perhaps a tiny fraction of those 99s remain today, the rest having long since joined those piles of colorful shredded metal…