Comments

• robin m said:
  

  hi Mike, glad you had a great time, loving the read, looking forward to more.

  -May 21st, 2008 at 7:07 am
• saab9x said:
  

  an enjoyable review.

  -May 21st, 2008 at 7:10 am
• mike c said:
  

  Love the review so far, very positive. I hope Saab gives Audi a run in the dust.

  -May 21st, 2008 at 10:54 am
• Alex said:
  

  That’s great to hear, now go out and drive a G35/335i/C350/S4 and tell me how well the Saab feels.

  Sure it feels great to drive compared to your C900, but let’s be honest here, a Camry V6 is a muscle car compared to the C900. Prospective first-time Saab buyers won’t care how the Turbo X stacks up against the Saabs of yore, they care about how looks, drives, and feels compared to the BMWs, Audis, Mercs, and Infinitis of today.

  -May 21st, 2008 at 11:04 am
• Swade said:
  

  It’s taken a long time. I’ve ummed and ahhhed about this a great deal for several months now. Based on this and your comment from earlier today, Alex, its time I invited you to leave.

  Your constant derision of Saab and pumping up of other brands is a clear indicator that you don’t really have an interest in the current content of this site. As the webmaster here I consider myself at least partially responsible for the tone of the site. I don’t mind criticising Saab where it’s due, but you’ve been on this high-horse of yours for months now and show no signs of getting off.

  For starters, I don’t agree with you whatsoever. I’d happily own an X and many others here would too. I’m quite certain that you’ve never driven an X and I’m reasonably confident that you’ve not actually driven a 2008 Saab 9-3. It leads me to wonder if you’ve driven the other cars that you keep touting here? Your assessment of the current state of Saab is not wrong in as much as they do need to improve, but your writings would have them on a par with a Yugo, such is the scalding criticism. The actual reports on the Turbo X have been highly complementary, and that’s from the reviewers. The people that matter - those that put their hard-earned on the hood, they absolutely love it.

  Do Saab need to improve? Yes. But are they a very good product right now, capable of satisfying many more customers than what they’ve got? Absolutely. The 9-3 is fantastic car.

  Secondly, I’ve got enough on my plate at work, at home and between my ears already. This site is my solace as well as my hobby. I care about the environment here and I think you’ve been fouling it up. Your crits might be well written (that bought you an extra month or so), but I consider a very large proportion of them to be unsubstantiated, unedifying and to a very large degree, just plain inaccurate.

  I’ve never banned anyone from reading or commenting on this site and I’m not doing so now. I’m not asking you to change your opinion. I’m just asking you to refrain from recording it here as I’m quite confident that a vast majority consider your descriptions of Saab’s current product to be false.

  ——

  To Eggs and others, my apologies for interrupting the thread with this unfortunate business, but one can never tell when breaking point is reached.

  Please, carry on.

  -May 21st, 2008 at 12:07 pm
• Kroum said:
  

  Great write-up, Eggs. Can’t wait for all the little details, and of course - the pictures.

  —

  I’ll have to agree with Swade here. Alex, as a regular to the site, I do find most of your opinions well-written, but at the same time childish and largely unsubstantiated. Saabs do need to improve indeed, but consistently bashing the brand and GM for absolutely everything they do or say is plain annoying. Have you even driven an Opel to make comments and assumptions about their steering racks, or are you just going off what you read on Autoblog?

  Oh, I am one of those consumers you brag about who cross-shopped the Turbo X against the 335xi, the S4 (and S5) and even the C63 AMG and still bought the Saab, without Bluetooth and with “only” 280 horses (and in case you’ve failed to see the Turbo X makes 100 hp per liter of displacement, just like the 335xi, but with only one turbocharger). I may be a Saab fan, but I also have enough common sense and intelligence to make an informed decision when dropping close to $1K a month on a car lease.

  And also my personal take - the G35 cannot even be a consideration because in my own opinion a 100% rebadge of a Nissan Skyline is not a premium car. Saabs may share parts with Opels (don’t Audis with VWs?), but at least they are not a badge-engineered faux-luxury brand.

  -May 21st, 2008 at 1:14 pm
• Alex said:
  

  Geez, at least let your site be open for some sort of diologue.

  Let me get this out first and foremost that I’m as big of a Saab fanatic as anyone else, and I’ve done my best to get my friends to see the light. I even convinced one friend to replace his Volvo V70R with a 5-door Viggen because he liked my Aero so much.

  What gets me so frustrated is seeing firsthand the mass exodus of former Saab owners to other brands. I live in one of the nicer suburbs of Boston, MA. A town filled with Harvard and MIT professors in the biggest Saab market of the country in which Saab sells the most cars.

  Growing up in the 90’s in a Volvo family, I remember seeing C900s, 9000s, and GM900s as often as I saw BMW’s or Volvos. Saab around here had the kind of repeat buyer niche that most brands could only dream of.

  What I’m seeing all too frequently now is longtime Saab owners abandoning the brand for other makes. I know too many people who were longtime Saab owners, but who now drive 3-series wagons, Outbacks, and V70XC’s. Saab has lost these buyers for a number of reasons, ranging from poor reliability to poor interiors. I think the dreadful reliability of the first years of the 9-3SS combined with it’s cheap-feeling (though great-looking) interior and it’s lack of a hatch or wagon option at launch drove many of the Saab faithful to other brands that did a better job of meeting their needs.

  As it is the most common car I’ve seen in the hands of long-time Saab buyers is the 9-5 wagon. The 9-5 launch was an example of GM-owned Saab doing something really RIGHT, they got rid of the 9000 hatch but instead offered the consumer the option of either a sedan or a wagon instead. The problem with the OG9-3 –> 9-3SS switch was that GM took a car that was offered as a 3, and 5-door hatch and replaced it with a sedan only, with no coupe or wagon option.

  Now after Saab lost those buyers with the poorly-orchestrated 9-3SS launch, the next big Saab models that the Saab faithful got to see were a rebadged Subaru and a rebadged Blazer. I’m sure that those cars burned a lot of bridges for Saab by validating the talk about Saab being a hollow shell of a once-great company that now sells rebadged GM’s, regardless of whether that’s true or not.

  Now Saab’s problem is that it’s going to take some really spectacular product to lure these lost Saab buyers back, let alone attracting first-time buyers to the fray. The worst thing about it is that in my opinion the 9-3 is 80-90% there, but it sadly falls short in a couple areas that are the most glaring on a test drive. The 2007 interior upgrade could have fixed most of those problems, but instead of an interior befitting a brand with Saab’s prestige we got more Opel bin parts and the radio from a Chevy.

  Before I finish, I want to add in a little example of how the 9-3ss falls short. My mom currently drives a 2001 V70 2.4t and she’s looking to replace it with something that’s not a Volvo. I suggested that she look at the Saab wagons because she liked my 9-5 so much. So we look at the 9-3SC, and her first comment is about how cheap the interior feels compared to her Volvo, though she did love the Saab seats. She also hated that the rear seats didn’t fold flat, and I myself was shocked to see a brand so known for practicality make such a glaring mistake when designing their car. At least now I know why the rear seatbacks were so scratched up on some of the 9-3’s we looked at. In the end it looks like she wants an 04-05 9-5 because that’s the only Saab that feels as nice to her inside as her 7 year old Volvo.

  I have real hope for the NG9-5 and the 9-4x, and I would like very much for my next car to be the rumored 350+ hp 9-5 Aero XWD, but Saab can’t make it with people like me and Kroum alone. Saab desperately needs to attract new blood to the brand and best way to do that is with new product.

  So forgive me for being frustrated when Saab pulls out yet another product release that ends up feeling 90% of the way there when they really need to be batting 1.000 if they want to attract new buyers and keep themselves alive. I’m sorry if that frustration comes across as negativity, it’s all to easy to focus on what they’re doing wrong while taking for granted what they’re still doing right.

  -May 22nd, 2008 at 9:00 am
• swade (Author) said:
  

  Wow. You answered my request to refrain from commenting with another long Saab rant. I think you just made my point for me, Alex.

  This site is open to discussion and dialog, but I think the type of dialog you’re trying to instigate is more suited to a forum, where people go more specifically to discuss stuff. It happens here, but it’s more of a reaction to news and other things posted.

  As mentioned, I find many of your complaints to be very subjective and quite often inaccurate. I feel, fairly often, that they’re likely to annoy owners of the cars you’re complaining about. Therefore, I often feel compelled to provide a response. The problem? I don’t have as much time as you have to write the response because I’m coming up with content, working, doing the family stuff, etc. It’s tiresome, and due to the fact that I think you’re wrong with many of the things you say, I’m asking you to refrain.

  I’m sorry mate, but it’s not your frustration coming across as negativity. It’s just negativity. Constant, comprehensive and yet eloquent negativity. It’s this all by itself that makes any complementary comments seem ingenuine and makes me say “here we go again” every time I see your name in my inbox. I’m just tired of it.

  You’re a very capable writer and I’d wholeheartedly suggest you consider starting your own site. If people want to read what you’ve got to say, then they’ll come.

  -May 22nd, 2008 at 9:42 am

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