Today is my second full day without smoking.

Now for the good news:

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For those of you that can’t decide about buying that new car during the “GM Employee Discount for Everyone” promotion, well, it looks like GM are going to give you a little breathing room.

The Detroit Free Press writes that the promotion may be extended until the end of July.

“The reaction to the program has been, to this point, way beyond what we thought,” said Mark LaNeve, GM’s North American sales and marketing chief……….”We’re considering it. We’d be crazy not to. Our dealers really want us to. But we haven’t made that decision,” LaNeve said. A decision would be made based on a review of GM’s inventory and wouldn’t likely be reached until the end of the current program.

This could be really good for the 9-7x, given the early troubles there were with invoicing etc. Here’s hoping that it does get extended.

If you’re keen to know how much you’d save on your new Saab, there’s a table here that’ll give you all the numbers.

This just in from GM:

Saab Reaches Four Million Milestone

A Saab 9-3 SportCombi model established a production milestone for the brand this week (21 June) by becoming the four millionth Saab car to be built.

At 14.35 hours CET, the fusion blue 9-3 SportCombi 2.0t – one of the first examples of the newly-announced model – rolled off the production line at Saab’s Trollhättan plant in Sweden and was taken straight to the Saab Museum, where it will go on display among a pantheon of historic exhibits.

Saab’s four millionth milestone has been reached 55 years and six months after the Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget (Swedish Aircraft Company Limited), commonly known as ‘Saab’, produced its first car at the same Trollhättan plant, formerly used to build aircraft. That car was a small, teardrop-shaped 92 model, the beginning of the company’s diversification into the automotive business.

As the brand moves further into the premium segment, Saab production milestones are being reached with increasing regularity. The millionth car – a Saab 99 Combi Coupé – was rolled out in January 1976, the two millionth – a Saab 9000 Turbo – in March 1987 and the three millionth – a Saab 9-5 sedan – in October 1997. Now the four million mark has been reached less than eight years later.

The best selling model of all-time is still the classic, first generation Saab 900, of which 908,810 were produced between 1978 and 1993. Number two in the list is the Saab 99 (588,643 units), third is the Saab 96 (547,221), fourth the Saab 9000 (503,087) and fifth the current Saab 9-5 series (392,048).

Today, the Saab brand offers customers more product choice than ever before. The current Saab 9-3 range includes Sport Sedan, SportCombi and Convertible variants; the 9-5 series offers Sedan and SportCombi formats and, in the United States, the Saab 9-2X and 9-7X add all-wheel-drive, sport compact and SUV versatility.

And here’s the SportCombi in all it’s glory. Click to enlarge

If you happen to live in Ontario (hello Brian), you could win a year’s lease on a 9-3 SportCombi. All you have to do (apparently) is complete the entry form at Saab Canada’s site, telling them what you think would have the best effect in making Toronto a better city.

Residents of Western Canada: be nice!!

I said ‘apparently’ earlier for good reason. The front page of that weblink says that all you have to do is complete the form. But if you go to the Rules & Regulations, you find this at Item 5(b):

General Conditions
5. To be declared a winner and claim a prize, the entrant selected for the Prize must………b) Correctly answer a time-limited, mathematical skill-testing question that will be administered over the telephone at a mutually convenient time, without help of any nature.

I’ll be asking this of Saab Canada – Which is it? Simply fill in the form OR fill in the form and complete a time-limited mathematical skills test not mentioned anywhere else on the site. Can people with fantastic literacy skills but poor numeracy skills win this competition?

More on this later…..