If you search "what happened to Saab," you'll find years of the same answer repeated: the brand collapsed in 2011, was briefly revived by a Chinese-backed venture called NEVS, and then quietly faded again. What almost nobody has reported is where a piece of Saab's unfinished engineering work actually ended up — and it isn't in a museum. It's spinning inside the rear wheels of the Renault 5 Turbo 3E, one of the most hyped electric cars of 2027, and the mainstream coverage of that car hasn't mentioned Saab at all.

What Renault has confirmed

On April 23, 2026, Renault Group and British in-wheel-motor specialist Protean Electric formally announced that Protean would supply the drive system for the Renault 5 Turbo 3E, a retro-styled electric revival of the 1980s rally legend. The two rear-mounted motors sit directly inside the wheels rather than driving them through a conventional transmission, produce a combined 555 horsepower (two units of 204 kW each), and deliver roughly 4,800 Nm of torque measured at the wheel. Renault and Protean describe the car as the first European passenger car to enter production fitted with this kind of drivetrain. It is a genuine engineering milestone, and it's been covered as one by outlets including Autocar, Electric & Hybrid Vehicle Technology International, and Automotive Powertrain Technology International. All of that reporting is accurate. None of it goes back further than April 2026.

Where Protean's technology actually spent the previous seven years

Protean Electric did not appear alongside Renault out of nowhere. In June 2019, the company was acquired by NEVS — the Chinese-conglomerate-backed venture that had bought Saab's remaining assets and Trollhättan factory after the original company's 2011 collapse — as part of a broader push by Evergrande into electric vehicle technology. NEVS didn't invent Protean's in-wheel motor system; it bought the company that had already spent years developing it, with the explicit goal of eventually putting it into a NEVS-built car.

The most concrete evidence of what happened next is visual: in early 2020, Protean's in-wheel motors were installed in several Saab 9-3 development vehicles and tested under winter conditions in Sweden. These weren't cosmetic mockups — they were real Saab 9-3 bodies, carrying motors mounted inside the wheels, being evaluated on snow and ice by engineers working out of the old Trollhättan facility. That testing directly informed the next step: a full electric grand tourer called the Emily GT, developed under project leads Peter Dahl and Frank Smit, who reportedly traveled to China to secure approval for the program from NEVS's ownership. Emily GT used four Protean in-wheel motors — one per wheel — giving it all-wheel drive with independent torque control at each corner and no conventional central motor or mechanical drive connection at all. The team built six drivable prototypes in roughly ten months.

What stopped it, and what didn't

Emily GT never reached production, but not because the drivetrain failed. Funding stopped when Evergrande's own finances collapsed, cutting off the money before the car could go through the further engineering, homologation, and industrialization work Smit has said would have taken another 18 to 24 months. The prototypes existed, drove, and proved the concept — they simply ran out of runway. NEVS sold Protean to BEDEO in November 2021 as it scaled back operations. Protean changed hands again in March 2026, this time acquired by Japanese drivetrain supplier EXEDY Corporation — and within weeks of that sale, Renault and Protean publicly confirmed the 5 Turbo 3E program. The corporate chain runs NEVS/Evergrande in 2019, BEDEO in 2021, EXEDY in 2026. The engineering chain runs Saab 9-3 winter test cars, Emily GT prototypes, Renault 5 Turbo 3E production.

How Saab's own people reacted

When Protean's LinkedIn post announcing the Renault deal went up, one of the comments came from Frank Smit himself, the former NEVS engineer who had led development of Emily GT and who now runs a Trollhättan-based venture called Trollhättan Mobility. He called it a fitting pairing of "car and driveline that makes everyone smile." Smit has since acquired the rights to the Sonett name — a Saab sports car nameplate from the 1960s and 70s — through an initiative he calls Home of Sonett, aimed at eventually building on the Emily GT's unfinished work, though no production program or timetable has been confirmed for that project.

What's confirmed, and what's still speculation

Confirmed: NEVS owned Protean from 2019 to 2021; the in-wheel motors were installed and tested in real Saab 9-3 development vehicles in 2020; Emily GT used four of the same motors across six prototypes; funding for Emily GT stopped when Evergrande's finances collapsed; Protean was sold twice more before landing with EXEDY in March 2026; and Renault publicly confirmed Protean as its supplier weeks later. Not confirmed, and worth treating as speculation: any claim that Emily GT was "on track" to beat Renault to production — it wasn't funded to finish, and Renault's program was a dedicated, funded supplier nomination that Emily GT never had. The claim isn't that Saab beat Renault to market. It's that the underlying engineering came from a program Saab's own people built, tested, and drove years before Renault's name was ever attached to it.

Why it matters

Saab enthusiasts have spent a decade and a half being told, correctly, that the brand as a carmaker isn't coming back. This story doesn't contradict that. What it shows is narrower and, in its way, more interesting: a piece of genuinely advanced engineering that Saab's people financed, built, and proved on snow in Trollhättan didn't die with the company. It changed owners twice, sat dormant for years, and then reappeared — credited entirely to someone else — inside one of the most talked-about EVs of the year. For anyone who has ever asked what actually happened to Saab, that's a stranger and more specific answer than "it went bankrupt."