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One obvious thing to check is the choke - the stock FoMoCo carb uses a water-heated automatic choke, and like any automatic choke, it can get sluggish as a result of crud building up on the linkage. Take the air cleaner off and look at the choke plate (flat plate on top of carb throat) -- when the engine is cold this plate should almost completely close off the throat, and then it should open up as the engine gets warmer. If your choke plate doesn't close fully, the car will be hard to start and will run badly until it warms up.
If this seems to be the problem, try cleaning the choke linkage on the outside of the carb using cleaning spray.
Even at its best, an automatic choke is a little quirky, so you might want to convert it to manual operation using a generic "manual choke conversion kit" you can get at any auto parts store. This replaces the automatic choke assembly with a cable that you can operate from inside the car. When it's time to start the car, pull the knob out all the way to close the choke; then gradually push it in as the car gets warmer. It's less convenient, but trouble-free.
In general, the FoMoCo carb is okay as long as it's in good condition, but the metal parts can wear and then the car will never really run well. Andy mentioned the idea of converting to a two-barrel Weber carb, which is great if you want to boost more performance -- but this also requires replacing the intake manifold, which makes it a bigger job and adds to the cost. If you need a new carb, a less expensive route is to replace the FoMoCo with a single-barrel Weber 34ICH, which fits on the stock manifold and is pretty much a direct bolt-on replacement. You'll need to do some tweaking of the throttle linkage to make it work, but if you buy it from one of our Saab specialist vendors (as opposed to just going for the lowest price you can find on the Internet) they should be able to give you some guidance on what to do.
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