Congratulations on your new Saab too – very jealous…

http://www.ttela.se/?article=41193

(click on “nästa bild” )

But there’s a serious point here. My colleagues and I are lucky enough to receive a company car, and part of the fun is going through the options list and creating exactly the car you want. And a car that is built to order is a more profitable one, because it is likely to be ordered with options like a premium stereo or heated seats which have much higher margins than the basic car itself. And in any case, you’re more likely to pay more for a car which is exactly as you want it, rather than one which has extras you don’t really want or is in a colour you don’t like.

So if Saab GB are selling more TTiDs as company cars which are built to order, I hope that also means that they are making more money on them. Jonathan Nash is right to ask the factory to give priority to the cars that have been specially ordered, rather than to churning out standard cars which as we’ve seen can take some keen incentives to get off the lot.

I think that you would also need to repaint the hood (bonnet) every other week right above where the V6′s turbo sits…

I don’t think that the Canadian market is big enough to justify a diesel Saab. VW used to offer some more diesel variants here than in the US, but they have a long history with oil burners, and a core market.

What I would like to see in a 9-3 update is a direct injection turbo 1.4 putting out 200 hp on E85 (and 185 on pump gas). This would be especially sweet if they could get the car to loose 100kg or so.

I sent you some emails the last week. Did you get them? I had another person who didn’t recieve my mail from that account, so I was wondering if maybe something’s wrong with gmail… As usual, no need to reply to them.

(from the same link!)

“Mr Nash also promised heavy revisions to the 9-3 before the new version arrives in around three years’ time.”