Saab 9-3 the standard offering, and a "HOT" (B204R, 200 hp) variant in the SE models for the 1999 model year. The 2000 model year saw a revision from SAAB's Trionic T5.5 to Trionic 7 engine management system. The T7 based engines were the B205L with and the B205R HOT engine with . The first generation 9-3 was also the first Saab available with a diesel engine, a unit also found in the Opel Vectra, Astra G, Signum, Zafira A. Unlike the Saab 900 (NG), the 9-3 is fitted with a CAN bus like the Saab 9-5. A Saab innovation is the
9-orthoplex 9-orthoplex In geometry, a 9-orthoplex or 9-cross polytope, is a regular 9-polytope with 18 vertices, 144 edges, 672 triangle faces, 2016 tetrahedron cells, 4032 5-cells "4-faces", 5376 5-simplex "5-faces", 4608 6-simplex "6-faces", 2304 7-simplex "7-faces", and 512 8-simplex "8-faces". It has two constructed forms, the first being regular with Schläfli symbol {3,4}, and the second with alternately labeled (checkerboarded) facets, with Schläfli symbol {3,3} or Coxeter symbol 6. It is one of an infinite family of polytopes, called cross-polytopes or "orthoplexes". The dual polytope is the 9-hypercube or enneract. There are two Coxeter groups associated with the 9-orthoplex, one regular,