Could the ‘900 factor’ mean a good year – finally – for Saab?

It’ll be a tough year in terms of sales but hopefully the latter stages of the year will see some excitement with the new 9-5 being shown and finally offered for sale.

So, in a continuing tradition here at Trollhattan Saab, here’s 9 things I want to see in the new year.

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1) A good owner for Saab

Is there anything more important on Saab’s horizon than this? General Motors have until March 31st to prove their sustainability and present their case for more funding from the US government. GM’s marketing maven, Mark LaNeve has already mentioned that there’s progress on the sale of Saab, so that “strategic review” they were talking about doesn’t look like ending with Saab keys in GM hands.

The one thing we all want is a responsible, believing owner for Saab. The brand has so much to offer the right owner. We just have to hope that that right owner comes along.

2) A good outcome for GM

Despite my annoyance with GM’s management over the last few years, no-one in their right mind would want the company to collapse. They haven’t grown Saab to any notable degree, and they’ve probably sucked a lot of the intelligence from Saab, but they’ve also kept the brand alive so that it can be sold.

All the Saab employees that I’ve met and enjoyed some time with are GM employees also. They’re great people and others just like them work with other GM brands. I may not like their product, but I hope they go OK.

3) No concept cars

As much as I like looking at them and imagining the future, we’ve seen enough concept cars for the time being. And I can’t imagine a concept that I’d like more than the 9-X Air, anyway, so let’s just enjoy that one for a while longer, eh?

What Saab need in 2009 is new products that people can actually buy and drive. The good news is that we’ll get it.

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Jacco has been kind enough to scan a story from the print version of Autoweek magazine, the Dutch version. It’s too long for him to translate and I can’t read the thing so I figured I’d just post the photos and check out how the Saab 99 Turbo stacks up against the new black turbo after 30 years.

It’s 280hp and XWD vs 145hp and FWD. Power everthing vs power assisted disc brakes. If they weren’t made by the same company and if they didn’t occupy a similar space in the Saab pantheon, then it would be chalk vs cheese. If you take pure mechanicals, the Turbo X wins with daylight second and the 99 a distant third. But if you add character and history to the mix, it becomes a much closer contest.

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The day after GMAC got a $6billion bailout and bank status, GM have announced cash rebates and 0% financing on a range of 2008 and 2009 vehicles, with all three US Saab models included. If he didn’t have a history of suing car companies, I’m sure GM would have Tom Waits’ “Step Right Up” blaring from loudspeakers atop the Ren Cen.

It seems if you want to recover some of your US tax dollars that have been given away to the car companies, this might be your best chance – and you get a 2008 Saab as well!

Note – you gotta act quick because this offer expires on Monday, January 5th.

From the GM press release:

GM today announced new reduced rate financing as low as 0% APR for up to 60 months on select new cars and trucks. The reduced rate financing is available to qualified buyers today through January 5, 2009 on many 2008 and select 2009MY vehicles (see list below). Of note, many of the vehicles listed below have stackable bonus cash and/or dealer cash ranging from $500 to $4,250.

“We’re very excited to offer this reduced rate financing through GMAC to encourage our customers to get back into the game,” said Mark LaNeve, vice president, GM North America Vehicle Sales, Service and Marketing. “This enables even more qualified customers to finance through GMAC at their local GM dealership, and provides additional financing capacity with conventional and reduced rate APRs for our dealers to make sales. With GM’s Financing That Fits, and the Red Tag Sale now underway that offers supplier pricing, customers have an opportunity to get a variety of extremely attractive offers through the end of the year.”

2008MY vehicles and offers for qualified buyers:

* 0% APR for up to 60 months on ‘08 Chevrolet TrailBlazer; GMC Envoy; and Saab 9-3, 9-5, 9-7X

There are other 2008 models from the GM range and a short list of 2009 models, but Saab aren’t included in the 2009 offerings. It’s a 2008 clearout as far as Saab are concerned.

One person in comments has noted that both the rebates AND the 0% financing are available on the Saabs but you might want to check that out before you dive in.

Autoweek spoke to a couple of Saab dealers in Detroit who had this to say:

Because the 0 percent financing waives the cash rebates available for the vehicles, the interest rate doesn’t really provide a better deal for most Saab customers, Playter said.

Another Saab dealer, Tom Sheehan, agreed.

“It certainly won’t appeal to them as much as if the prime rate was 6 or 7 percent, but we’re trying to move a market that’s a little dormant,” said Sheehan, who owns Sheehan Saab in Lighthouse Point, Fla., and is on GM’s National Dealer Council.

Sheehan said he expects traffic at his store to increase 25 to 50 percent because of the GMAC financing news. But his December sales still may not reach last year’s levels. Sales have fallen 20 to 30 percent from December 2007, although they are up from the loss of at least 50 percent Sheehan saw in November.

The dealers also note that this band-aid isn’t anywhere near enough to fix what’s ailing Saab.

“For viability for us, this isn’t the answer,” said Playter, owner of Glassman Auto Group in suburban Detroit. “We’ve got two new products, and both of them have been shelved”–the new 9-5 sedan for six months and the 9-4X crossover for a year.

“We need product, and we need a clear decision made” on Saab’s future, he said. “We’re going to continue to be a part of General Motors’ family, or we have a buyer lined up, and here’s the buyer.”

Kudos to GM for giving their dealers a chance to make some money, but the dealer quoted above is correct. The last thing Saab needs is another bunch of US customers being taught that if you sweat it out, you’ll get another huge discount from GM.

What they need is compelling product and certainty, neither of which GM can provide at the moment.

So….if you’re in the market and can handle the thought of an 08 instead of an 09, start the new year with a turbo rush and get in to your local Saab guy.

He could use someone to talk to, I’m sure.

So how do I handle this one?

Am I glad that one of my Australian motoring colleagues is getting a chance to drive the Saab 9-3 TTiD on an extended test and write about it to a large readership?

Or do I get poopy at the fact that when I asked Saab Australia or a long-term test vehicle a year or so ago, I was told that they don’t do long terms tests, that it’s against GM policy?

Ah, stuff it. We don’t have room to park the thing anyway!

Australian Car Advice do have the good fortune of a long term test in a 2008 Saab 9-3 TTiD and it seems to be making all the right impressions so far. They even wrote in a complimentary fashion about the accommodations for four adults on a recent trip!

Being a diesel, one of the main points of interest is the fuel economy, which they got down to 5.2 liters per 100km – and that’s with the aforementioned 4 adults on board. Not bad at all, eh? I’ll let someone smarter than me (and someone who’s not writing at 12.20 in the morning) do the conversion to mpg.

This instalment is a fairly short one but they’re promising more soon. I just hope they clean the bird poo off the car between now and then.

Local Tasmanian Saabnut, Drew B, is doing a fixer-upper repair job on a 1995 V6 Saab 900. I covered the initial stages of the job a few weeks ago.

Let’s recap.

When Drew first got the car, it looked like this:

After removing the damaged radiator panel (and associated bits) and straightening the supports, the new panel was spot welded into position and primed, ready to go:

So where are we at now? Well, it’s not quite done yet, but should be on the weekend. Have a look….

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Saab are taking some critical bagging in the motoring press this week as various outlets do their year-end thing.

Autoblog have run a post listing ten vehicles that don’t deserve their engines. One of the ten is the Saab 9-7x Aero, which has the same LS2 engine as the 2005-2007 Corvette under the hood.

Their contention – one that I can very well understand – is that the 9-7x is pretty much the anti-Saab and as such is a blight on the brand (I wouldn’t go that far). Despite the fact that the 9-7x Aero is without doubt the best Trailblazer-derivative there has ever been, they say that a vehicle that so poorly represents the brand on the badge shouldn’t have such a ripping powerplant.

People who own a 9-7x Aero will disagree, but I can see Autoblog’s point, pointless as it is for them to make it.

Thanks Alexandre!

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Australia’s Drive has compiled a list of Hits and Misses for 2008, and Saab’s on it. You might have already guessed that they’re not on the “Hits” section.

Currently Saab and Hummer fall under the umbrella of GM premium brands but the US car maker will soon bring Cadillacs to showrooms. It’s a bold move and one that was delayed until 2009, something of a blessing given the economic crisis. The next big challenge for Cadillac is taking on the likes of BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi.

GM will no doubt be hoping Cadillac has more success than Saab, which saw sales slump 38 per cent in 2008.

And GM will no doubt invest more in marketing Cadillac than they did in marketing Saab. And they’ll no doubt provide more funds for new models for Cadillac than they did for model development with Saab.

I live here. I think Australia’s much more of a Saab-inclined country than a Cadillac inclined country.

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Ryan over at Saab History is reporting, via Nines magazine, that Saab USA’s John Libbos has left Saab in the last few months.

Libbos was most recently the product guru for the 9-3 and 9-5. That made him the guy who put together the specifications of the vehicles, the options and packages.

His experience with Saab is vast and, to be honest, it’s hard to imagine someone who’s been involved with Saab most of his adult life just leaving and starting something new.

Like much of the stuff that’s happened at SaabUSA recently, I’ve been critical of product decisions and that would probably fall into John Libbos’ territory. Regardless, the guy’s given a working lifetime’s service to Saab and I wish him well in his future endeavours, whatever they might be. I hope it’s not too far away from Saab as he probably has more knowledge about the brand than anyone else at SaabUSA right now.

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I hope the people who will end up managing Saab in the future are reading this stuff.

I hope they’re reading it and saying to themselves “never again”

Never again will we allow Saab sales to go unrealised due to poor model development, poor management or poor customer service.

Never again will we allow Saab to be lampooned like they have in recent years with brand-killing mistakes like the 9-2x and the 9-7x.

Never again will we allow the character that inhabits* this storied brand to be diluted for the sake of a short term hook.

Never again.

* Thanks Ted!

December kicked off with a Boston Globe story on the infamous Saab Art Car that lives in the area. It was good to find out some background info on this rolling fun piece.

I’ve been truly blessed with meeting some fantastic people whilst writing this website. One such person I met briefly in Sweden last year. He’s a former Saab designer, now running his own design firm and doing some work for Hirsch on the side – Taras Czornyj. That’s a brief Q&A and a look at his beautiful Hirsch Saab 9-3 SportCombi.

Of course, December was THE BIG month when it comes to the GM bailout. The big three CEOs left their private jets in the hangars and drove to Washington, rocking up in hybrids to show how focussed they are on small cars that few American consumers really want to buy when gas is below $2 a gallon. They had to present their plans for the future and it was here that we learned that Saab was officially under review.

That means that if they can, they’ll sell Saab.

I had my thoughts on this whole situation and Eggs had his thoughts about it, too.

Reports came quickly out of Sweden that the government would provide some aid to keep the car industry going there. These reports were quickly confirmed by the government itself, who took legislative action just a few weeks later. They denid any intentions to take ownership stakes in either Saab or Volvo, however.

I took a breath and summarised the options as I saw them.

These were the prevailing thoughts at this time:

- “A global strategic review of Saab does not mean a sale of Saab, but rather how we can secure the future of Saab and how to raise the money.”

- “It could mean that we work together with an external partner.”

- “There are a number of interesting possibilities. But, of course, you can never exclude the possibility that we sometime will be sold.”

And if Saab were to be sold, that means we had to look at the options as to who may buy them. The global automotive family tree is a complex one, to be sure, but Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne forecasted that it would get a lot simpler in the next five years or so, with the number of automotive conglomerates reducing to around six in that time.

I chatted some more with Eric Geers about the whole situation.

EG: it’s seem that the only thing that’s in the media is then, OK, it’s for sale. And the same has happened to Volvo. Whereas the other options were forgotten. So we tried to explain yesterday what that could be and why they will be, as we see it, on the top of the list…..

….It involves a number of options that we’ve considered, like project-based funding to even equity ownership. We’re looking for the best financial options that will secure a good outcome for a successful Saab business.

Bones.

Happier news, of sorts, in my own black humour way – Kroymans killed their association with Cadillac in Europe. GM Europe should do the same.

We saw an amazing online virtual tour of the Saab Museum in Trollhattan.

Logan got married and drove off happily with his new Mrs in his Saab. Congratulations again, mate!

I finally succumbed and wrote that I hope GM sell Saab. Opel union bosses said that if that happens, they’d still be happy to build the 9-5 at Russelsheim for the new owner. Seems like people at Saab Sweden want to bring the 9-5 back home to Trollhattan, however.

We looked over various bits of Saab technology that we’ve never seen make it to production.

GM announced they’d be selling some of the ‘lesser’ family jewels, including a Pikes Peak Saab from the mid-1990s. Mark LaNeve from GM also came clean on what a “strategic rview” of Saab really means:

LaNeve said the auto maker expects to announce significant developments in efforts to sell its Saab and Hummer brands by the end of March 2009.

SaabUSA announced that they would be showing the Saab 9-5 Griffin Edition already confirmed for Europe at the Detroit Motor Show in early 2009. It’s the 9-5’s swansong and looks to be well equipped but high priced.

The end-of month good news was that I bought a car, which I’ll pick up in a few days from now. It’s a 1999 Saab 9-3 Monte Carlo and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. It needs plenty of work, but should be a hoot to work on.

I have some stuff brewing for TS and need a little help.

If you’re good with search engines and stuff, I need some help with figuring out which are the most linked-to stories here at Trollhattan Saab.

And if you’re good with generating graphics and logos and stuff, I might need some help from you, too.

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Why?

Trollhattan Saab has some problems. In fact, it’s been four years since I started this site and it was a case of learn-as-you-go, which means there’s been a number of mistakes made and the legacy of those mistakes is a poorly organised site with a number of technical issues that need fixing.

For example, certain people using Internet Explorer can’t see this site if there’s a Youtube video posted here. That’s a problem because I like the video medium and would like to use it more often. For some reason, the various bits of code that govern the presentation of this site cause IE to go all haywire when a Youtube video is posted and people are using IE. I’d prefer everyone gets Firefox, but what can you do?

Hence, there’s some changes coming. These won’t be band-aid solutions, though. These will be permanent fixes.

If you can help with the search and image related tasks listed above, please contact me: swade99-at-dodo.com.au (replacing the -at- with @)

Cheers.