Recently, here in Australia, our national broadcaster has been airing a show from England called Scrapheap Challenge. And I’m addicted to it.

For those who haven’t seen it before, what you’ve got is two rather corny English hosts, an equally corny but endearing script, you’ve got two teams of three people each, a scrapheap (of course) and a challenge (of course) to build something out of scrap in 10 hours. The “something” might be a powerboat, a spy-car, a submersible car, a Mini-flinger, a giant rapid-fire arrow shooter, a motorised chariot…. the list of challenges has been long and a great deal of fun to watch.

To complete each challenge, the team is given an ‘expert’ to guide them on their build. I’m consistently surprised at how they manage to fabricate and motorise their projects, and actually get them to work (most of the time).

The one thing that seems to come through from the show is that more often than not, the simple but effective design wins. If I were to counsel a team going on to the heap, I’d drum it in to their heads so that they never forgot - keep it simple, stupid!

The lesson I’d hope Saab could apply from this rather long introduction? Make sure you know what works and keep on making it better, and better, and better.

This all stems from the story doing the rounds today that BMW is considering adding a hatchback variant to it’s next generation of the 5-series. Auto Express claim that spy photos show an enlarged back window that could well point to a Skoda-style twindoor hatch opening on the next 5-er.

In all honesty, this seems to be a little bit of speculative opportunism on Auto Express’ part, a past-time they’re not unfamiliar with. But suppose it did happen to be true….

Around six years ago, the last of the turbocharged Saab hatchbacks made way for a Sports Sedan. Whilst it looked OK at the time and had a bunch of body-variant siblings on the drawing board that might have satisfied the traditionalists, the Saab 9-3 SS came with serious baggage in terms of costs and inflexibility. That baggage led to a freeze of sorts on Saab development whilst the place was restructured. The hatch was dead and despite the place held in people’s hearts, it was unlikely to be resurrected any time soon.

Two years ago BMW got a lot of people excited, and a lot of Saab fans a little worried, when they announced their 3-litre twin turbocharged engine. That engine has gone on to win a Best Engine award two years in a row and when you drive it, you can see why. It is a very good powerplant.

Now, if AutoExpress are right, it seems that BMW are exploring the world of the hatchback. A world that we who are immersed in it know to be a place full of good common sense, sporty profiles and heaps of luggage room. A world that Saab claimed as their own for many years before abandoning it in a fruitless chase for more market share, primarily in the US market.

So perhaps a reminder is in order. One that I’m pretty sure Saab designers are mindful of themselves, though their pencil-wielding, beancounting colleagues may not quite understand.

Saab’s formula should be fairly simple - intelligent vehicles that provide comfort, safety, performance and utility. For many years, Saab achieved that with the use of wagons and hatchbacks, which were an economical and very Swedish solution for the problem of being able to get a lot of gear into your vehicle.

Saab have already given up a lot of the high ground on turbocharging. They don’t have a hatch in the range at the moment but there’s still a lot of credits in the bank thanks to the 900 and 9000. It’s time to cash in.

Please bring back the hatch, at least as an option on all these future models that are coming out. Make Saabs that are Saabs. It’s fairly simple.

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If you’re reading from Australia, Scrapheap Challenge is shown on ABC2 at 6.30pm, six nights a week, though I fear they’re rapidly running out of episodes to show.

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And thanks to the many people who emailed me about the BMW hatch story.

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