A good find here from Sorbus in Sweden.

I hope when the design forums like Car Design news etc discuss this car they call it for what it is – a flat out compact copy of the Saab 9x.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve sort of had enough of Japanese and Korean car designers copying Europeans. Hyundai are probably the worst offenders.

Just another reason why the vast majority of them are still soulless up until this point.

The final 9000 entry is with us, and it’s PG’s 9000 Aero, shot in the open country around Bozeman, Montana.

This car also featured as a SOTW calendar model last year.

Thanks for the pics, PG, and thanks to everyone who participated in the month of 9000 lovin. It’s been a hoot.

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Spare a thought for Olav, in Norway. Olav always signs off his emails to me as “Olav, who always takes the long road home”. Thus is his enjoyment for driving. Olav’s got a very nice 9-5 wagon and I didn’t know it up until recently, but he’s also a biker as well.

Tragedy struck recently in the form of a sweet but pedal-confused little lady in a Suzuki. Olav’s still going to be able to drive his Saab on the long road home (eventually), but his beloved BMW bike…..

I thought I should share with you what happened in my garage (yes, in my garage!) today on Friday 13.

One of my neighbours, an old lady, is a nice and cute old nurse, but famous for her poor talents in handling a car. To make this a short story she entered our garage, strapped herself in her red Suzuki Swift and started to reverse her monstrous vehicle out of her parking spot.

And then everything you can imagine went wrong – to my disadvantage!

During her reversing she really floored the accelerator, lost control over her monstrous Suzuki and crossed the garage strongly accelerating, targeting my very beloved BMW R1100S (in mint condition!!!!). She hit my beautiful bike and pushed it right into my highly beloved 2005 9-5 SportWagon (also in mint condition!!!!).

She is, of course, very sorry for this, and I feel sorry for her and have comforted her for hours now. And thank God no one was hurt. But I am sorry as well, extremely sorry.

My bike, the beautiful BMW R1100S has really severe damage, and my SAAB (weighing 1,6 ton wich was moved sideways and nearly touched my neighbour’s 2004 SAAB 9-5 sedan) has rather heavy damages itself. The lady’s Suzuki Swift is probably a write off, and I fear the same for my BMW.

I am crying. The motorbike season has just started, and now I have no bike. I will even be without my 9-5 for a while, but I am assured that I will have a SAAB rental car in the meantime. All parts here are well insured, but I am crying.

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

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Olav sent me all this info a few weeks ago, but for one reason or another (generally revolving around busy-ness) I missed it. I was prompted to post it today as Olav left a comment on another post that was a sort of update on the situation….

The bike was indeed written off by the insurance company, as was Mdm Demolition’s Suzuki. Olav’s Saab 9-5 is currently in the shop getting fixed and will be back with him soon.

The month of 9000 love is rapidly coming to an end (6 hours to go here in Oz) but I’ve received a few late entries.

I wrote yesterday about Nevitz trading his 9-2x in and getting a 9-3 SportCombi, something he’d been thinking of for a while and was quite excited about. Well, this is another recent purchase story. Seems like everyone’s upgrading their Saabs!!

Frequent visitors to this site would have seen Saaboy in comments. He’s a young bloke from San Diego and he’s recently added this 9000 Aero to the family home.

It wasn’t a simple acquisition either. I had to travel to pick up my Viggen, a journey that even involved an overnight ferry. Despite this is was only about 600km as the crow flies. Saaboy had to travel to Chicago to have a look at this one as there were few 9000 Aeros in Cali, or nearby, and none with a manual gearbox.

The car’s got 86,000 miles on it and needs a little work and TLC, but I’m sure Saaboy’s going to have it smelling like roses in no time. And yeah, he LOVES those seats.

Check out the front plate. Imagine that one in your rear-view!

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As was noted by ctm in comments a few days ago and here on the site several times, press kits for the new Saab 9-3 range are due to go out to the mainstream motoring press in mid-May. I’d assume that this is so they can get their print articles organised prior to the unveiling of the car in June.

I don’t think there’s been a press embargo in the last 12 months that hasn’t been broken, so it’ll be interesting to see who blinks first.

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A three-week press event will be held immediately after the conclusion of the Saab Festival in Trollhattan.

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I’ve heard from ‘the continent’ that there’s some MY07 cars driving around with MY08 mechanicals. Too late for testing, I’d suggest, but there’s a lot of people that need to get a feel for this car prior to it’s release.

Several dealers in North America have also had an advance opportunity to drive the new 9-3 and of course, are muttering very good things.

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Three things we don’t know yet:

1) What will the sedan look like? They’ve done a great job keeping this covered.

2) Will there be any changes at all to the interior? My bet is that there won’t be, but my suggestion would be to include the Hirsch carbon leather dash as standard on the highest spec models.

Here’s hoping.

3) Are there any big surprises coming? We know a fair bit about this car already, but is there something Saab are keeping up their sleeve that’ll just blow us out of the water?

It’s always good to see someone get a car they’ve dreamed of getting. It’s a great feeling. I managed to do it myself around 18 months ago and HAL_9000 managed to go one better just recently.

As a young fella, Hal_9000 dreamed of getting a 9000CS and it took him 15 years to do so. It only took another 12 months or so for that dream to be ruined by a light truck that crashed into it and wrote it off.

A replacement arrived just a few weeks ago:

It is a stock UK spec (albeit with US indicators) 1996 model Saab 9000 CS Aero which I have owned for a few weeks now. The ability to complete overtaking manoeuvres is devastating and the Aero seats are a revelation!

A very nice replacement indeed!

Congratulations on the replacement, just stay away from those trucks, OK?

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Following is the transcript of a speech by Carl-Peter Forster, at a General Motors Corporate event in Dudenhofen, Germany, on March 29, 2007.

It’s a good insight to the current state of affairs at GM Europe and goes some way to explaining why things are done the way they are at GM. There’s been a number of changes in Europe and in particular, with Saab’s operations at Trollhattan being shipped to Russelsheim. Hopefully, this will give you some understanding with regard to the strategy behind that.

It’s definitely not a Saab-specific article, but the little Swede does rate a few notable mentions. The funniest of which was:

For instance, it is of no interest to our customers if we try to use the same type of screws in as many of our vehicles as possible. Nor is it in any way important for the brand character of the respective vehicles. It would be a different story, however, if the customer had the feeling that the interior of a Saab were largely the same as a Chevrolet’s.

*cough* corporate radio *cough*

Anyway. This is a long one but well worth a read for those of you that are interested in the future. GM Europe, in contrast with its sibling in North America, is going along OK at the moment and if you believe Mr Forster, that’s only set to grow, which has positive implications for Saab along the way.

This speech will give you some insight as to why.

Thanks to our unnamed speech provider.

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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,

I am happy you could join us here today, and hope you are having a good day.

It is certainly a good day for us – just like the last two weeks have been very good for us at General Motors Europe.

On March 14, our turnaround was officially confirmed. It took six years for GM Europe to overcome its crisis and return to profitability. Six years and a good three billion dollars. And the fact that our workforce was open and ready to cooperate also played a key role – that’s something that we recognize and greatly appreciate.

Today you have already gotten to know many different aspects of GM Europe. Now I’d like to give you some insight as to why this turnaround was so difficult, what we have learned from it, and what risks we still face. And then I’ll of course give you an overview of our plans for the future and explain why we are so confident about the future and these developments.
[Read the rest of this entry →]

Whilst I’m talking 9-3 SportCombis….

I get to read every comment that’s written at this site. They’re emailed to me. So I get a flowing picture of what is sometimes an ongoing conversation here at TS.

If you don’t read every comment here, then there’s a chance you don’t know much about a guy here named ‘Nevitz’. He’s a comparative recent addition to the TS public and notable for being the only current 9-2x owner I know of who frequents these pages.

For the moment anyway. His email to me this morning will tell you the story and I don’t think he’ll mind if I share it with you…

OK, so I wanted to tell somebody, but didn’t think it appropriate to post it as a comment. Since my friends and family, especially the wife, are tired of me talking about Saabs, I figured I could tell someone who could relate to a similar feeling of elation.

I just came from my local dealer and… *drumroll* … signed for my NEW CAR!

They didn’t have it in stock, so it’s being driven here to Jacksonville from a dealer in Miami, about 360 miles away. That makes me sore, because they at first said it would be trucked here. To add to it, they told me the entire time it would cost me NOTHING extra — and then they said, “Oh by the way, since you’ve already committed to it and its being sent, that’ll be an extra $400 please!” I bucked, explained that I could easily take my business directly to the other dealer without spending that, to which they did the right thing and took care of it-of course they wanted the unit sold to count for April sales figures!

Ok, now for the gooey part:
2007 Saab 9-3 2.0T SportCombi
Fusion Blue
Sentronic Automatic
Power Moon Roof
60th Anniversary Edition!

I’m working Monday, and my sales dude will be delivering it to my work, and hauling away the junker of a 9-2x with him (lol.. I really did love that car..).

So it’s official. Whilst we were a pseudo-dual Saab family, with my 9-2x and the wife’s 9-5, I can now say with gusto that I own two that were bred in Trollhattan! How proud am I? Like that of a newly expecting father today, and (Lord willing) a delightful father on Monday! We shall soon see.

I’m not much of a religious man, but I shall recite something like this as I drift into dreamy land. “Lord, please let the men driving my car cross-state be professional, responsible, sober men. And Lord, please protect my new baby from any of your glorious creatures, like that of a deer. And dear Lord, may thou deliver me if it shall be a lemon. Oh, and please protect all those around me too. Thanks!”

Congratulations on the new addition to the family, Nevitz.

I know you’re going to love it.

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And there’s only a few more days until those April sales figures are announced. Fingers crossed, y’all.