I just received this photo via email from RJ in Utah. The photo was taken by a friend of his, Mason, with the following text included:
How many pumpkins can you fit in the back of a Viggen?
The answer is at least 25 with room for four people and the shelf partition still in. I bet I could have fit 40 before the hatch wouldn’t close.
BRING BACK THE HATCH!!!
If Saab needed any prompting as to what people would like to see in a new, rightsized Saab 9-3, or a new model in the Saab 9-1 (if they’re going to go ahead with it) then here’s their cue.
How many other cars boast around 230hp, bucketloads of torque, a magnificent interior with the best seats in the business, and the ability to carry four people and 25 pumpkins?!?!
Build it and they will come.
Thanks again, RJ, for the email. And to Mason for taking the shot in the first place. What a car!
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Try doing that in ya 9-3SS!
Yep Bring Back the Hatch ! -But with an upgrade regarding the water spill in the trunk !
Obviusly the old one was constructed indoor,with absolute no wind !
In my OG 9-3 2002 Aero in windy and rainy weather I always have to park the front up against the wind, and open the lid in 2 steps. First open slightly so most of the draining water is correctly catched, and then quickly open it full. Only this way most op the water stays outside the trunk, and rear speakers.
Very annoing feature in a brilliant car.
True, the combination of practicallity, enough power, style, comfort and safety was what saab made great.
My guess is that in 20 years or so, the current 9-3 will be regarded as one of the worst saabs ever build (taking into account that the 9-2x and the 9-7x cannot be considered being saabs).
Van god los.. Be gentle with you words. The current 9-3 is a realy good car. But yes, it lacks a hatch model.
Aeropilot.. Yeah, maybe those speakers come from Saabs marine division
The drenched speakers has always been a problem. But then again, no other brand with hatches has solved the problem either. Maybe a design competition should be issued by Saab GM?
Perhaps GM should commission SAAB to make a concept with the first water-proof hatch? They could spend a lot of money on the design language and then choose to never make it because of cash flow concerns?
van god los: I wouldn’t say the 9-3SS is the worst Saab ever built, probably just the most conservative. Trouble is conservative and Saab have never been a good mix. Hopefully that lesson has finally been learned?
OK, OK, maybe I exagerated a bit but the thing is that the current 9-3 could easily be confused with a toyota or something similar. It lacks that saabish je-ne-sais-quoi …
Keep it quiet but I’m currently driving a ovlov v50 simply because I found the present 9-3 boring. When you know that before I drove an OG 9-3 2.0lpt and even got married in a classic 900 convertible, you know that it was a difficult decision to switch to ovlov.
There was at that time simply no saab alternative
Although the current 9-3 does not have a hatch, per se, it does come in the combi. As a very proud owner of 08 9-3 2.0t combi, and, as an owner of hatches in the past, (albeit not a 900 or 9000), i don’t see how the combi differs (obviously, the combi is a bit bigger). why don’t you guys count the combi as a 4-door hatch?
As for the car itself, I tested the v50, bmw 3series wagon and audi avant, and the 9-3 IS a special car. great torque, MPG, exterior styling (seriously, the rear of the combi is like NOTHING else on the road), breaks, seats. it may not be a 900, but it is a pretty darn good car. And as a previous owner of a 05 Saabaru 9-2x and 2003 9-3 SS, it is HEADS and TAILS improved.
JBG,
You really do make good points in your comments. My fiance has a 2007 9-3 Combi and we often receive comments regarding it’s avant garde styling queus in the back half.
van god los: I agree with you about the styling. It made me yawn when it arrived and it still doesn’t do much for me even after the facelift. I think the 9-3SS tried to be all things to all men and ended up being very little to anyone.
JBG: Saab hatches offered station wagon versatility without actually buying a station wagon. Now just like every other manufacturer, you have to buy the station wagon!
Let’s see the 9-3SS the worst Saab ever.
First of all it is the ONLY Saab to earn a Top Safety Pick from the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (iihs.org) It is the first car to ever earn a double safety pick not just Saabs but all manufacturers. (Best frontal impact and best side impact.)
Because it is a sedan it has a greater torsional stability than previous Saabs, and with the Re-Axis passive rear steering the 9-3SS Aero and now the 9-3 Turbo X XWD are the best handling Saab.
Also the 2.8L V6 Aero and 9-3 Turbo X XWD are the fastest stock Saabs you can buy.
Stying is subjective and I really like the 2 door Viggen hatchback. You can not beat the versatility of a hatchback but you can not argue with performance and safety of the 9-3SS.
Haha, tis the season. Thanks to RJ and Swade for indulging me.
It’s a long way from the last post where my entire engine was in pieces in the trunk! Good news is my Viggen is back and better than before. Haulin’ pumpkins and takin’ names.
God save the hatch.
Seems like a bit of a can of worms has been opened re: the 9-3SS? I don’t think any Saab fan will disagree about the inherent qualities of the car, but for many of us the mix has never been right and it’s not just the lack of a hatch. To quite a few of us, the 9-3SS is like a C900 4 door sedan or a 9000CD. All right for some, but not for us. Although the 9-5 was missing a hatch, most of us liked it. To me that car has seemed more ‘Saablike’ than the 9-3SS has ever managed to be. I can’t exactly describe why.
As to safety? Volvo went down that path and produced some of the most boringly conventional designs ever. It took a long time to change from that. Hopefully Saab has learned not to make the same mistake?
I agree with Markac : it current 9-3 ss (especially the pre FL) has the same problem as the first generation ford mondeo or the last generation ford focus. Both early ’90s cars, a decennium when marketeers got really powerfull in the automotive industrie.
The type of cars that were designed to please everyone and as a consequence lacked caracter.
I mean of course the last generation ford escort …
Van God Los: Agree with you. Current 9-3 is the worst ever, but I´m afraid it is showing the way Saab is going to be in the future. It failed as a Saab because it is not !
It has no carisma. It is not “saabish” at all.
It is a GM mix from around different places.(German and later Australian / Mexican engine)
Build on a GM platform shared with other brands and despite of the last innovations as Haldex 4W
-it will never be a true Saab to me.
NG9-3 is way too small for transportation of four of us full grown scandinavians and their carriage, over longer distances.The cabin is hard to get in to (watch your head) legroom in the rear is a joke, and the luggage compartment is too small in both model types.
Thats why I have 9-5 Sedan and OG 9-3 (Aero´s) in my driveway.
Considered as the last real Saab models. (with Södertalje engines)
The 9-5 Aero MY 04-05 (before the interior was Opel-lised) is probably the best Saab ever.
Saab, bring back the hatch, – but not in a Insignia re-badged form. – make a true Saab.
Otherwise they -slowly but surely- will die as unique brand. – and loose me as a customer too.
Hmm, I think there’s a post in here somewhere. I’m not sure I agree with everything that’s been said here, but I’ll try and explore that a little in the next few days.
Current 9-3 the worst ever? I don’t think you can argue that objectively.
to the 9-3 haters:
Comparing the 9-3 to Saabs from a decade ago is meaningless – you have to compare the car to current cars – audi a4, 3-series bmw, vw passat, etc.. While nowhere perfect, I think one can make an argument that the current 9-3 is better than it’s competition – indeed, that argument has been made in a recent posting.
Some have said the current 9-3 does not have the (as the French say) a certain I don’t know what. What do you really mean by ‘saabiness’? the essence of saab, as i understand it, is unique design, utility, safety, sporty, right-sized turbo charged power plants? check, check, check, check, check for the current 9-3. Even the ignition in the right spot.
The 9-3 does share architecture with other models; while so did the 9000. the 9000 platform was shared by Fiat and the Alfa 164. Also, in 1967 the 96 came with a v4 Ford engine. is the 96 not a ‘real’ saab? sharing does not discredit the car.
it sounds like the only thing that would please you guys is a reissue / retro of the 900. many have tried doing retro, but only the mini has found success. it is more than fair to offer a critique of the 9-3, but to dismiss it outright is unfair and doesn’t help the discourse.
I think what gets people going is that with the 9-3SS, the car just doesn’t have that “feel” that even the OG9-3 and 9-5 (before the 2006) model had. A lot of it has to do with the interior in my opinion, because that’s the only thing I keep coming back to. Sure, the 9-3SS doesn’t offer a hatch, but it has what has to be one of the prettiest shapes of any sedan from the past 4 years (something I think the refresh blunted a bit but that’s a different rant for a different day). I challenge even the most hardcore GM-hater to argue otherwise.
Sure I think wholeheartedly that Saab needs to bring the hatch back and I think that a Saab without the hatch is like BMW without RWD and american cars without big V8′s, it’s that deeply rooted as a part of Saab’s brand identity. The 9-3SS gets rough once you get inside the car where it reeks of a kind of GM cheapness and the design of the 2007 refresh especially feels like it was done as a chore by someone who cared little about how Saab does things.
It’s just the little touches, like the window switches on the doors, the loss of the SID, GM climate controls and radio, and the overall cheapness of the acres of plastic. It doesn’t feel like it was designed to feel like a Saab, it feels like it was designed to be a flashy, “european” feeling interior and it ends up feeling painfully generic. The silver-trimmed gauges and the aluminum silver trim strip around the dash just have this feeling of flashiness for the sake of flashiness that’s very un-Saablike. Give me a big slab of wood, bare green gauges, rich feeling materials and plenty of buttons any day of the week, that’s what Saab interiors are about.
Thankfully, the 9-4X interior feels like it’s going back in the right direction with a balance between the button-heavy old interiors and the kind of flashiness that most European car buyers now expect from their purchases. Hopefully the new 9-5 will feel even more Saab-like in it’s execution.
GM just needs to get the message that it’s never going to be able to make Saab work as an equal to BMW, Mercedes, and Audi, at least not with the resources that GM seems to want to give Saab. Hopefully GM has learned that if they ever want to make money with the brand, they’ll need to stop trying to go mainstream and let Saab do it’s own thing for a change. There’s enough buyers out there that appreciate that sort of thing that Saab should have no problem finding it’s niche again.
My 9-3SS has an enormous trunk. You could fit two dead bodies in there AND a few pumpkins!
Alex:
You just got it right about the NG 9-3 cheapness in interior. That’s what saabiness is about.
The 9-5 MY06> is about the same. Buttons and dials are spoiled with plastic-aluminium, wich looks cheap to me rather than sporty. The Aero steering wheel is also a plastic disaster.
BTW I have never understood why it is called SPORT Sedan!
I have never seen Saabs Sedans as sportscars. So keep the cheap “sporty elements” out please.
Every time I get in to a 9-5 MY05< or OG 9-3 it feels like taking on a old pair of shoes,
and that’s a wonderful feeling. Everything fits correctly, seats, dials, buttons – everything.
And no, -I’m not a grumpy old man who does not want changes, -but it has to be for the better !