As a follow up to my recent story on some production problems plaguing the Turbo X, I’ve received some info from SaabUSA about the number and nature of vehicles affected.

As a quick go-over: the production problem seems to stem from the ordering system and the way it communicates between the dealership and the factory. The effect of this has been a mixup in the specification of a small number of cars hitting the US market. The Canadian market has also been adversely effected.

SaabUSA have written to me as follows:

….as far as we know, the Saab Turbo X ordering issue in the U.S. only affects the SportCombi (about 20 percent of total orders) in combination with the optional Navigation system. For some reason, the code for Nav was in a few cases not correctly read during the U.S. Turbo X SportCombi manufacturing process.

As a matter of course, Saab Automobile USA is working with the individual customers and dealers to settle the issue to mutual satisfaction.

It’s good that the number of cars will be limited and that they’re dealing with the adversely affected customers. I’ve heard from one dealer whose customer initially walked away from a pre-ordered car, but is now coming back at the idea of a Saab-provided Garmin unit for his car.

I think that’s a great outcome from a bad situation. This is a great, great car and those who get one are going to absolutely love it. It’d be a shame to see some miss out over this.

Hopefully the lesson’s being learned and the bugs in the system are being ironed out.

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