Background
Sinclair was born on March 17, 1932 in Philadelphia. As a child he helped in his father"s grocery shop and attended Haverford High School in Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania.
Sinclair was born on March 17, 1932 in Philadelphia. As a child he helped in his father"s grocery shop and attended Haverford High School in Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania.
He attended Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania and later took a job selling medical equipment.
Career with Saab
In the late 1950s he joined Saab United States of America as a salesman and, after a short break working for Volkswagen and Volvo, rejoined Saab to become president of its American division in 1979. By 1983, under Sinclair"s management, the 25,833 Saab vehicles sold exceeded the previous year"s record-breaking sales by 42%. In lieu of the annual allotment of 1,000 two-door economy-model sedans, Sinclair pushed the parent to manufacture vehicles equipped with high-end specifications including fuel injection, turbocharger, a five-speed gearbox, and also that the car would be available as a convertible, a body style that other car manufacturers had stopped producing expecting that safety rules would ban them.
The convertible came in 1986 and was a great success.
Some 250,000 of the Saab 900 convertible were sold (including the NG900) over the succeeding two decades. In a 2007 interview, Sinclair stated that his approach in introducing the new vehicles was that Saab "should add content, add performance, add sparkle and luster to the brand" in order to move to a higher niche market in the United States while the firm was focusing on a "no-frills market" in Europe.
Sinclair initiated an effort to construct buses at a manufacturing plant near the firm"s Connecticut headquarters in 1984, but terminated the program in the face of "low bid" contracts that made the sale of buses unprofitable. Personal
Sinclair was a resident of Santa Barbara, California after his retirement from Saab in 1991.
He died there at age 77 on May 10, 2009 due to cancer.