About the door handles, I love the design, easy to use, functionality you can open fitting the hand over or under the handle. Then the incredibly solid feel, there is no movement, the plastic is hard and good feel. Instead of many cars, with cheap feeling, you take the handle and has many movement like it hasn’t a good adjustment of the parts. This happens in BMW’s, audi’s, and for example in my father ML350.

Finally the safety reason, the Saab door handles are designed to be able to support all the force needed to open the door if you are trapped after an accident and the emergency assistance need to open the door blocked, hooking it throught the door handles.

greetings

Also, I don’t believe Saab sold their soul because of this car. It’s only a refresh…let’s see what happens. What is selling their soul anyway? Being attractive?

It’d be ridiculous if they did something like eliminate the characteristic hatchback or two-door body styles to sell more cars and didn’t see greater sales as payback.

The thing that was special about SAAB’s door handles was that they were different than just about any other cars’ handles. They also until recently along with the side mirrors contrasted with the body color, which made them a bit unique.

You asked.

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/05/09/away-we-go-official-photos-of-saab-9-3-sportcombi-posted

Compare that to all the complaining at Saab forums about door handles, body-cladding, et al.

1973 Gripen,
What makes the outside door handles so special? The ones on my c900 have a metal piece that you push into the door handle. The 9000 and the 9-5 have different door handles too, I don’t get what is so SAAB about the handles?

While not functional, it did make the car doors look far less slab-sided and tall. It broke up the visual height of the door and kept the waistline of the car from looking too tall. But it seems like the trend nowadays (why is SAAB following trends instead of setting them) is slab-sided high waistlines like on the Chrysler 300 and Cadillac CTS and STS. Personally I liked the strips on the doors. I also liked the unique door handles SAAB USED to have. Now they’ve got door handles that look like everyone else’s (like on my mom’s new Acura TL or on my neighbor’s Chrysler Sebring). I guess it’s cheaper that way, but just add that to the list of unique SAABisms lost. What’s left?

What is the benefit of them?