Trollhattan Saab has changed!
The site you're viewing now is the original Trollhattan Saab weblog, though it's now an archive only and no new material is posted here. As of February 2009, all new material is posted at our new site - Saabs United.
Please join us at Saabs United and get your daily Saab fix from Saab sources all around the world.
November was dominated by the developing crisis at GM. You’ve probably heard anough about that by now, but for posterity’s sake I’ll cover the essential items here.
The month started on a much lighter note, with Gripen’s 11 year old son reviewing the Saab 900.
Eggs entertained with a double-banger top 9 list about the things he envies, and the things he doesn’t envy, about BMW. The truth.
SaabUSA gave themselves a mulligan on the Euro Delivery Program. In October, we inadverdantly heard from a SaabUSA Customer Service representative who said it was cancelled with no view to being reinstated. In November the story was a little softer:
While it is true that, given the current business climate and negative Krona vs. Dollar exchange rate, there is currently no defined plan to reestablish the European Delivery Program, Saab Automobile USA has never said nor confirmed that this program has been canceled indefinitely. Just for the record!
Having previously done alternate colour versions of the 9-X BioHybrid and the 9-X Air, the photoshoppers around here got busy with alt-versions of the Saab Aero-X. As with the 9-X Air, I’ll take mine in black, thanks. Mama!
Pressure started to build on General Motors. The US Congress was talking about $25billion in loans to Detroit car makers, though it went nowhere. GM were burning through (i.e. losing) up to $2billion per month in cash.
I finally – finally – got some wheel time in the Turbo X. It was great fun and I had a great time drawing comparisons here between the Turbo X and a tuned Saab 9-5 Aero and Saab 99 Turbo.
Public Relations 101: This is GM chief Rick Wagoner on November 13 in a story at Autocar:
“We’ve got some other assets that we’re looking at selling,” he said, “but not brands.”
That means Saab, whose future within GM has at times looked distinctly uncertain – and which has had the launch of its critical new 9-5 model pushed back until 2010 – will stay as part of the car maker’s portfolio.
Less than three weeks later, Saab were put up for “strategic review”. GM are in hard times, though it’s not the first time.
Back to genuine fun Saab stuff – we met up with a Saab collector in Italy named Emanuele with a whole shedload of cars. He’s Saab Krazy!! This was my favourite from the collection, a 9000 Carlsson:
We discovered that the “Build Your Own” section of the SaabUSA website was completely screwed. We checked again a few weeks later and it was still completely screwed. As of today, I believe it’s at a 95% level of screwedness.
BSR’s E85 tune for the Saab 9-5 (2002 and after) was officially sanctioned for classification as a “green” car, which means that cars that were originally just gasoline cars could get the tune and then get re-registered as green vehicles by the government, thereby avoiding congestion charges, parking fees and other assorted taxes.
EduSaab did some fantastic research and found a new patent for the Saab 9-6x, a vehicle that was shelved around three years ago. Caused quite a stir around the web, that one.
The Detroit-Three CEOs had their first appearance before a US congressional committee. The appearance ws an absolute disaster for all of them. They all flew in on separate private jets, for starters, a fact which provoked the best quip of the week from one US senator – “couldn’t you have downgraded to first class?” The CEOs were roasted and sent home with orders to do some homework and come back with concrete plans as to how they might turn their businesses around in exchange for the loans they were seeking. Here’s Rick Wagoner’s speech.
What matters to me about this whole crisis thing.
Saab received investment funds for an extended crash lab and GM-wide fuel testing.
After poor ratings in recent years, it was good to see Saab do a whole lot better in the 2008 JD Power Customer Satisfaction ratings.
It was crisis time, so I had a number of conversations with Eric Geers of Saab Sweden. Part 1. Part 2, and Part 3.
Eggs considered the whole GM-Ford-Chrysler situation and captured the attention of many by asking what was so wrong with bankruptcy for these companies?
For me, Saab = Turbo.
Bloomberg were the first to seriously hint that GM were considering a sale of Saab. Given that was the case, I argued a case that I’m not so sure I support anymore, not to a full extent, at least – that Saab should not be sold to the Swedish Government.
November finished on a happy note – the first official pictures of the Saab 9-3x leaked out. They showed here first and were very well received. The 9-3x should go on display at Geneva in early 2009 and I’d imagine will be selling a mere matter of months after that.
-
