Not much time today due to work commitments. Have fun y’all.

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We’ve talked about ads here at Trollhattan before. I still owe everyone my thoughts on what would be a good ad for the 9-7x. I’ve always liked Saab’s advertising. Like the cars, it always came accross as being pretty subtle, and very clever.

Fortunately, we don’t get a lot of Saab ads here in Australia. I say ‘fortunately’ because some of the more recent ads I’ve seen from the US really haven’t been up to the standard.

Well, Jay has been talking ads recently, and Autoweek had him covered (SC newshound, Edusaab, picked this up yesterday, but I couldn’t find a source to quote, so held it off).

LA MALBAIE, Quebec — Executives of Saab Cars USA Inc. want the company’s advertising to place greater emphasis on vehicle performance.

Current ads for the new 9-7X SUV and 9-3 sedan stress the distinctive design of the vehicles and the individuality of their owners. But the ads say little about vehicle performance.

“We’re doing a very nice job in saying Saabs are different,” says Jay Spenchian, who became Saab general manager in April. “We need to evolve a little bit more into saying why they’re different.”

Spenchian said at a press event here this month that he has asked Saab’s ad agency, Lowe & Partners Worldwide of New York, to “dial up some of the performance elements” in the broadcast and print ads it creates.

‘Slow’ ads

“Some of the ads are a little — I don’t want to say soft, but slow,” Spenchian says. “They lack a little bit of the energy that I really think is Saab’s brand character.”

Spenchian says Lowe agrees with the new approach.

Hollie Geren, a spokeswoman for Lowe, says the agency is working with Saab on a new campaign. She declined further comment.

Through the first five months of 2005, Saab sold 15,432 vehicles in the United States, down 6.7 percent from the year-ago period.

Chris Cerrina, president of Parkfield Motors in Bergenfield, N.J., heads the Saab International Dealer Council. He says he shares Spenchian’s desire for more emphasis on vehicle performance in marketing and advertising.

Saab’s scheduled introductions of a 9-3 sport sedan in September and a convertible in October provide an opportunity to stress the car’s V-6 engine and other performance features, Cerrina says.

“We’ve got a pretty daunting task,” Cerrina says. “We’re looking to rebuild the brand.”

Spenchian, 46, came to Saab from Cadillac, where he was marketing director. Cadillac helped revive sales in recent years by using a Led Zeppelin soundtrack in its TV commercials. But Spenchian says a similar hard-rock approach would not be appropriate for Saab.

“When I say performance, do we have to say it?” he says. “I think we can show it. We can feel it from the music used in the ads, what gets depicted in the ads.”

Jim Sanfilippo, executive vice president of automotive consulting company AMCI in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., says Spenchian is applying lessons he learned at Cadillac in emphasizing performance in Saab’s marketing.

“Launching the (Cadillac) CTS, he knows that people who buy these cars expect performance,” Sanfilippo says. “The 9-3 is very competitive against the BMW 3 series. It corners, brakes and accelerates very close, and most people don’t know it. Getting Saab to get credit for that performance is key.”

Break with tradition

Saab spent $64.9 million last year to advertise in U.S. media, TNS Media Intelligence reports. It spent $12.3 million on advertising in the first three months of 2005, TNS says.

Spenchian says Saab earmarks about 10 percent of its marketing budget for nontraditional advertising, such as Internet ads and consumer events, including test drives. That share could rise to 20 percent to 30 percent within the next year, he says.

“With Saab, since you have an awareness problem, you do get a pretty strong return from traditional media,” Spenchian says.

But “unique and interesting” events also can draw consumer attention to the brand, he adds.

GM seeks to increase sales in large metropolitan areas, especially on the East and West coasts.

Spenchian says he hopes the 9-3 convertible will become a halo vehicle for Saab in big markets such as Los Angeles.

Most of you know I own a 99 Turbo that I’ve been slowly trying to enhance (need cash – send money!!).

Dynamic Sydneysider Brendan Burdon has pulled his finger out and created an Aussie Saab 99 registry and an Aussie 99 forum to go with it.

If you’re an Aussie and have a 99, then go register it (’them’ if you’re greedy) and even if you’re not an Aussie but you have an interest in 99’s, then join up on the forum.

Take a look below, why wouldn’t you have one??? Such a magnificent beast.

Couldn’t resist a little blurb on the Aussie that’s just been taken No 1 in the NBA draft, Andrew Bogut. And just to prove that there’s no sure consistency in tastes around the world, I read in a newspaper article this morning that one of the first things he wants to do car-wise is a get a Holden Monaro to keep here in Oz for when he comes home to visit. That’s a GTO to you American folks. He plans on getting a Benz for driving around in Milwaukee.

The name ‘Monaro’ is a fair-dinkum legend here in Australia and it’s no surprise to me at all that an Aussie kid made good would want one for the garage.

I imagine it’d be a little more surprising though, if Marvin Williams (picked at No. 2 by Atlanta) came out at his press conference and said “Yeah, I’ve got millions now. I’m off to get a GTO while the employee discout thang is still going on!”

Automobile do a brief write up on testing the new V6 Aero. And yes, they like it. One thing they also do in this article is the annoying pigeonholing of Saab owners as “devotees” that “live for high strung fours”. Obviously the V6 is going to be totally unacceptable!! Where do they get this sort of crap??

Can I put this sort of generalisation in the can with the word “quirky”??

Thankyou.

Now that that’s out of my system, please enjoy the review. Can’t wait to drive one of these beasties.

UPDATE: I dont want to sound like I’m flogging a dead horse here, but the whole ‘quirky’ thing really annoys the daylights out of me. It seems to be the fallback default adjective of every unimaginative journo that gets the privelege to pick up a set of keys.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a Google News search for ‘Saab Quirky’. Read it and weep. Seven (7) separate news reports in the last few weeks that can’t talk about Saab without mentioning the ‘Q’ word.

Hacks!

I just received this photo via comments. Any ideas??

Well, first up, the 9-5 doesn’t currently come with a 1.9 diesel (according to the UK Saab site). Secondly, that ain’t a current 9-5 rear end. This is:

Can I go out on a limb and suggest that someone out there in cyberspace has had the good grace to drop me a clear-as-day photo of the yet-to-be-released 9-5 facelift, taken at the Saab Festival in Sweden a week or so ago? Here’s the rear-end spyshots we’ve already seen:

Now I don’t know about you, but I think the shot at the top and this second one here look awfully similar!!!!!

The same shot appears to have been uploaded over at SC. I’d have to add to the consesus opinion there and say this doesn’t look like a positive re-modelling of what is a pretty superb and underrated car. Scroll back up and compare the current and proposed rear-ends again. One looks a whole lot more ‘vanilla’ than the other.

Kudos and a big hat-tip to Floris.

UPDATE: Read the story below, then have a look at Autoweek’s review of the GMC Graphyte – a GM two-mode hybrid SUV prototype. It sums up the dilemma and the current proposed solution in one nice, neat article, with pictures.

UPDATE 2: As if on cue, here’s another story on future vehicle and propulsion delivery, one that also happens to mention the 9-5 Biopower (now accounting for 66% of 9-5 orders in Sweden)

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The Original Post:

You have a finite supply of oil, and a finite ability to refine it. You have growing demand from not only existing markets, but also from rapidly expanding new markets. What to do?

You can:

a) stick your head in the sand and pretend nothing’s happening (just remember that with you head in the sand, your backside is exposed and unguarded)
b) try and stretch the current resources further, or
c) find alternative fuels and uses for them.

Thankfully the people with a real stake in the industry seem to be doing little, if any, of (a). There seems to be a lot more of (b) going on and the progressive types in the industry are exploring more and more of (c).
[Read the rest of this entry →]

UPDATED!

I first posted these on site back in June 2005. I’ve always loved these posters and when I first loaded them on the site I included the text for around eight of them. Unfortunately I tired or writing them all out.

Thankfully, Jeff I recently offered to finish the job, and what’s more he’s done it in a single sitting!!

Enjoy these brilliant images, now complete with text thanks to Jeff’s magnificent efforts.

It’s not quite a complete set, but it’s close….

Saab vs WYSIWYG
What you see is what you get. A rather unimaginative way of looking at the world. Take the Saab 9-5 wagon. On the surface, a cargo carrier. But look under the hood. A turbocharged engine that generates enourmous amounts of torque. The car’s versatility is evident: Cargotracks for securing loads, an optional sliding floor to make loading easier. But what about the torsionally rigid body construction that gives the car handling characteristics similar to a sports sedan? Can you see that?

Plenty more after the jump…..
[Read the rest of this entry →]

If you relied solely on sites like ITV or CarKeys for your news, you’d just be finding out now that Saab made it’s 4,000,000th car at Trollhattan last week.

But you read it here last week, right?

Kudos to ITV for having a better picture than mine, though. Up until now!!!

As always, click to enlarge.