Following on from the Viggen press release I published a few days ago and in the spirit of Viggen love, here’s an old review of the car. It originally appeared on Top Gear’s website and appears to have been written by Captain Slow, though his name only appears in the article and not in the byline.
It’s 8 or 9 years old now, so I don’t think he’d mind me reproducing it here as part of my ongoing Viggen tribute.
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A car bursts through the wall and in to the room. That was clever – ah, hang on, the wall has a doorway in it, but it’s been papered over. So this is the automotive equivalent of fighting your way out of a paper bag. Still, enough to confuse the driver though, who overshoots his mark and has to reverse back to the centre stage. It’s then that I realise he’s wearing a pilot’s headgear.
This would look pretty cool if he were in the cockpit of a front-line military jet – a Saab Viggen, for example – but in a car, the impression is that he has donned a welding mask and shoved a vacuum cleaner nozzle in his gob.
Why? Because this car is the um, Saab Viggen, a spunked-up 9-3 available in three-door, five-door and cabrio guises and ‘the ultimate performance Saab’. The Swedes are milking the aerospace heritage thing again. Never mind that the relationship between Saab cars and Saab aeroplanes is pretty tenuous these days, or that the Viggen is a bit of a steam fighter by modern standards, or even that its engine is built by Volvo – it’s this or dwell on the 9-3′s relationship with the Vauxhall Cavalier. And nobody wants to be a Vauxhall Cavalier pilot when they grow up.
As soon as you fire up the Viggen you know it’s a bit special. The 2.3-litre lump settles down to the slightly uneven idle characteristic of all engines that have been tampered with. A bigger turbo, trick exhaust valves and other shenanigans see power raised to 225bhp and 252lb ft of torque available from 2,500rpm. As you feed in the clutch, a slight snatchiness tells you that it has been beefed up, as have the drive shafts. The steering is meaty, like a reindeer sandwich.
But even before you clamber in to the cockpit, you know this is a Saab-nutters Saab. There is an indiscreet boot spoiler that does an excellent job of spoiling rearward visibility and there are side skirts, all of which, says Saab, effect a 50 per cent reduction in high-speed lift. Yes, reduction. This is a worrying claim from a company that used to make aeroplanes.
While we’re outside the car, I’d like to mention the bootlid, which automatically locks itself after a set period when you turn off the engine. This time period has been calculated to equate to slightly less than the time taken to remove your seatbelt, open the door, climb out and walk round to the back of the car. It’s deeply irritating and makes about as much sense as a speed hump on a runway.
On board the Viggen, meanwhile, all is accepted 9-3 wisdom, with a supremely logical facia and big buttons poked easily with your thick sheepskin flying gloves. All, that is, except the dashboard surround, the sight of which causes your key hand to pause midway to the steering column and even before you’ve remembered that the keyhole is actually on the floor. As real wood veneer has no place in a fighter’s cockpit, the dash has been finished in a sort of shiny silver with dark flecks. It looks like the inside of my oven door and a bit half baked as a consequence.
The rest of the car, however, is distinctly overcooked. Given the equivalent of a gentle post-sauna birching, the Viggen performs rather well. The engine, though a little more gruff than the two-litre turbo unit, is truly magnificent. There really is no perceptible turbo lag and the shove comes so soon – there’s plenty of it from as little as 2,000 revs – that the impression is more lazy V8 than highly strung four-pot. The Viggen offers up outstanding tractability for spurts of motorway madness. It’s like a car with an afterburner. Like a fighter aircraft. Enough! The only complaint so far is that on rough surfaces there’s a bit of turbulence, a few crashes, from the rear end.
Give the Viggen a proper caning on a winding road, however, and it starts to fall apart. There’s no traction control because, say Saab’s ground crew, a bit of torque steer is welcomed as feedback by the enthusiast driver. B?lj?cks, as they say in Göteborg. This is where the Viggen comes in for a bit of flak.
Perform a snappy overtaking manoeuvre and the Saab’s nose can wander in a way that suggests you’ve just had a blow out. I realise that the best traction control is the driver’s brain, but this phenomenon is so greatly affected by changes in camber and road surface that you’d need a Cray supercomputer implanted in your head to deal with it. It’s worse on something like the tight second-gear hairpin I tried. On exit, the engine is sitting plum on its torque peak, and unless you manipulate the throttle with watchmaker precision you at best run suddenly wide, at worst spin away another fiver’s worth of valuable rubber. Lest this be put down to the old bugbear of May being a crap driver, I hung around at the same bend and observed the efforts of my highly skilled colleagues in the motoring press. They were all at it.
In the end, I thought the Viggen would be improved greatly by a bit less power, a bit more refinement and a little more styling discretion. Oddly, there is a car to fit these requirements. It’s called a Saab 9-3 2.0 Turbo. That car is tasteful, enjoyable and a triumph of Swedish design over humble Luton floorplan. But the Viggen exposes the 9-3′s fundamental flaws too readily. It’s like strapping a turbojet to Bleriot’s cross-channel monoplane and hoping no-one will notice. Like the papered-over door of the first paragraph, you can see the joins too easily.
I am enjoying these insightful write-ups on the Viggen as I knew little about the history of that particular model so the cult following was a bit lost on me at times. Even the salesperson at the dealer where I purchased my ’07 Saab knew next to nothing about this model when I inquired about it and somewhat dismissed it.
Interesting point in the article about Viggen – I always found that self locking feature of the boot (hatch?) on my SportCombi annoying as well – even with the keyless entry. That and the fact I had to press the unlock button twice to unlock all the doors on the car. Luckily I finally was able to gain access to those functions and reprogram those ‘standard’ features that I never asked for.
topgear is topgear. simply the best. entertaining read.
I agree with the boot lock. I have read several jourous that complain about it, do not know of any other manufacturers that have it and I do not understand it myself…. Think its just one of those “being different for the sake of being different” but I might be wrong.
Have never heard of anyone who liked the boot locking function or why it is the way it is?
I wouldn’t go so far as to say I like the boot-lock, but I don’t get what all the fuss is about. It’s only a problem if you unlock it well before you want to use it. I’ve only ever unlocked the boot whilst on my way to using it and it’s never been locked before I get there.
Having said all that, if the rest of the car is unlocked, then the boot should be too. Makes sense.
Never thought of it myself. I like that it locks automatically when you drive away. But I never really use the boot much. Living in Sweden with all the rain and snow, it find it too annoying getting 2 liters of snow or water into the trunk when you open it.
So I usually puts my groceries in the back seat instead.
I guess the boot lock got fixed in later years.
What I take away from all of these reviews is that auto writers are not very good drivers and don’t know much about cars.
I don’t own a Viggen, but I’ve driven one and know how it compares to a regular 9-3.
Autowriters would like to make you believe that driving a Viggen (or any 9-3) hard and fast is nearly impossible, but it’s really not that difficult. They key thing to remember is that the pedal on the right controls how much torque gets sent to the front tires. If you find that the front tires are smoking and that the car is sliding off the road, that probably has something to do with your right foot. If you can’t figure that out, maybe you shouldn’t write about cars for a living.
I’ve certainly had enough of reading about how traction control and four wheel drive should be mandatory in all cars. All that these two features do is take away the joy of driving.
Thank you Saab for making a car that appeals to people who like to drive, even if it cost you some bad reviews.
Swade – my dissatisfaction with the boot lock was that if the car was unlocked you still had to press the button on the door or the remote to get in the back of the vehicle. And you only had one chance to get in after you requested it to unlock. If you open it and close it – you have to press it again to get in.
Although in hindsight – I think I was more annoyed that I could not change it and my dealer wanted $29.95 to reconfigure the settings. Not a lot of money, but you would have thought they would have reviewed this with me at the time of delivery and configured the settings to my preferences before I left with the vehicle. It is always those little things that dealers miss….
Either somebody set a different time on boot lock or it was really cpt. Slow testing it
)
I have no problems getting around the car twice before it lock …
And I somehow like the feature. Maybe because nobody will try to steal something from inside when waiting on light (unfortunately it sometimes happens, guys on mopeds do this and are hard to catch
PS. from manual MY2000:
Several of the systems in your Saab
car may be adjusted to better fit your
individual needs
Some functions are governed by legal
requirements and cannot therefore be
reprogrammed.
Consult an authorized Saab dealer for further
information.
Car alarm/central locking system:
• The level of the siren when locking/
unlocking, HIGH or LOW.
• The number of blinks when locking/
unlocking, 1 to 7.
• Automatic locking of the trunk when the
car is driven, 1 to 8 mph (2-14 km/h), YES
or NO.
• Preclude the unlocking of the trunk while
the car is driven, YES or NO.
• Automatic locking of the trunk after
1 second-4 minutes if it has not been
opened, YES or NO.
• Automatic locking of the trunk when it is
closed, YES or NO.
I do like that the trunk locks when you drive. That makes sense for the reason papluh points-out (to foil thieves at stoplights). I also like that the doors automatically lock (to foil carjackers). However, I can’t think of a reason why when the car doors are unlocked the trunk would not also unlock and remain unlocked until the doors are locked. Why this weird time delay thing where the trunk locks itself after a set period even if the doors are still unlocked?!?!
Seriously, I’m confident the designers had a darned good reason, I just can’t figure out what it is and would love it if someone knew to explain.
Another minor annoyance I’ve found: when I stop at a gas station to fill the car I’m in the habit of locking the doors when I get out. Sometimes I have to pay inside the convenience store attached to the station, but most of the time I just lock it to keep people out of the car while I’m distracted pumping gas. Well, when you lock the doors it automatically also locks the fueling door. D’oh! One of these days I’ll get used to that.
Oh, did not know that the dealers could turn of that function, however I agree with 1985 that the function is somewhat strange to me. For carjackers, would they not try to open the side doors to kick you out of the car?
Anyway, its a good thing that you can turn it of, but I imagine many people looking at the SC thinking “why is this good for?”. If its as easy as changing the settings, why is this not an option from factory? To have journalists write abotu something that anoys them when it easily can be turned off is rather unnessecary. If there is a reason for this boot lock (which I am sure there is) it should be communicated… Most people that are into saab knows the reason for the key placement (at least the history behind) but everything that is different should be explained if it is not obvious….. Thats my opinion anyway…