Author Archives: swade

Holy cow! A Saab 9-3 Aero XWD road test!

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I know that recently it’s all been crisis-this and bailout-that around here. I’ve personally reied to make sure I keep things balanced with car stuff, like the wheels post from earlier today, etc, and I know Eggs has done hist part to try and bring us back to our happy place.

That business-related stuff is important as it relates to Saab’s future. But it’s also important to remember why sites like TS exist – because driving is fun, and a Saab is one of the most rewarding vehicles to drive.

Saab sales are way down this year, like with most brands, and whilst I get it on one level, it absolutely perplexes me on another. Why? Because the 2008 Saab 9-3 is the best 9-3 anyone’s been able to buy. That should mean increased interest, but it hasn’t. We could theorise about that all day long, but auto123 in Canada have been driving the car and have some things to say that’ll remind you why you’ve got (or want) a Saab in your driveway.

Our reviewer is a guy named Justin Pritchard and he’s spent some time in a 2008 Saab 9-3 Aero with XWD. The full review is here, but I’ve clipped a few snippets as an entree.

A Canadian testing in the early winter? It’s good to read this, then….

This generates a more planted and stable handling dynamic free of annoying early intervention from stability aids. End result is a sure footed grip on any surface and a delightfully lively and agile feel. It’s very tidy in most any handling situation, and very much an all-season driver’s car.

And contrary to the masses…. me included:

Some don’t see the price-tag in the car’s exterior styling, but the interior of the loaded tester was packed with everything Saab has to offer. Included was automatic everything, power everything, navigation, Bose audio, a sunroof and memory seats. Leather wraps the steering wheel, seats and door panels, and aluminum trim combines with rubberized controls for an exciting yet reserved atmosphere.

And he finishes thus:

There are better ways to look like you spent big bucks on a premium sedan, though 9-3 is tops if you’d rather fly under the radar and not lose your ride in the Longo’s parking lot.

Yes, I’ve only picked out good bits, but that’s because the not-so-good bit only comprise one paragraph and this is an overwhelgmingly positive piece.

The 2008 Saab 9-3 IS a great car. I’m sure the 2009 is even better.

Let’s hope the world gets to hear it.

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World car production map

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In light of Sergio Marchionne’s prophecy that there’ll only be six major auto manufacturers in the future, this is an expecially interesting little snippet that ctm spotted in the Swedish news and sent through via email.

It’s a ‘map’ of worldwide automotive production and I’ve got to admit, I was a little surprised by some of it. Just the sheer number of different countries involved in automotive production is more than I first thought. I always thought that Australia had a reasonable-sized production capacity, but we’re dwarfed by near neighbors like Thailand and Malaysia.

The map is in Swedish, but don’t let that scare you. I’m sure you’ll make out most of the country names.

Click to enlarge.

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Saab sales snippets

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If you’re in the US then you might be interested in this Turbo X SportCombi that Wulf found on Ebay:

The good news – it’s only got 25 miles on the clock and it’s selling for $29,000!!!

The not-so-good news – it’s an auto. Not ideal, but I’ve been in an auto at 170k/h – on dirt – in a Turbo-X so they’re still quite capable.

The story – apparently a few cars suffered some ‘minor’ hail damage while they were sitting at the port. They were all fully repaired by Saab and auctioned off to dealers by SaabUSA. This is one of those cars. it doesn’t say “hail damage” on the title, it’s all clear, and it comes with the full warranty, etc.

Not a bad opportunity, that. The car’s physical location is in New York. The online location is on Ebay.

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There’s two ways to look at Saab Australia’s sales for November.

The glass half empty: they only sold 80 cars this month, despite offering huge loyalty discounts to current Saab owners and a great sub-$50,000 deal on Vector Sport models (extended to Dec 31).

The glass half full: they sold twice as many in November as what they did in October!!

Woohoo!!

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I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry at this one. Scanned from his local newspaper and sent it by Saabob in Canada:

Only 38 left……..

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Saab wheels: a quick pictorial

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In many instances, the wheels maketh car – a topic we’ve discussed here before. Fortunately for us, Saab have been maketh-ing the wheels for years.

Saab have a great track record for making some great wheels and unlike other manufacturers, they haven’t always been expensive add-on options.

Here’s a brief look at some of Saab great wheels over the years. Yet another reason why I love these cars.

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Early cars got a simple steel wheel with an elegant pressed steel hubcap.

Some early Saabs also had minilites available, which looks stunning on 96s and 99s. Here’s a customised set on a souped up 96.

Saab Sonetts and 99 EMSs saw the most frequent use of the classic Saab soccerball wheel.

The Saab 99 Turbo saw the debut of the Inca, which also carried through to the earliest Saab 900 Turbos. It’s one of the most unique wheel designs ever, but a pain in the butt to clean and re-paint.

The first 900 Aeros saw the advent of the classic Saab three spoke:

…..And the three spoke evolved over the years. This is one of the most desireable Saab wheels of all time, the super aero 16-inch as seen on a beautiful 9000 Carlsson

The directional three spoke was common on the second generation Saab 9000, but looked best on the late model Saab 900

The 1990s saw further evolutions of the three-spoke theme:

More recently, Saab have explored 5-spoke designs, or evolutions thereof. Saab’s 9-3 Viggen wheels were notoriously soft, but looked fantastic with their shadow-chrome effect paint.

Ten-spoke wheels have also been featuring recently, opening up the five-spoke patterns of earlier years

Whilst the 10-spokes look alright, I prefer the six spokes of a few years ago. These took the idea of the old three-spoke wheels in a new direction, with two sets of threes.

The now-classic double-Y is one of the best

….and even the Turbo X explores the double-three idea:

In the future – will the finally bring a turbine wheel into production????

And of course, what wheel pictorial would be complete without the Saab space saver spare?

:-)

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These photos were all sourced from Flickr and I apologise to the originators, but I neglected to get links for them on this occasional. They were sourced simply by doing a search for ‘Saab’ and going through around 40 pages of images.

Again, my apologies. If there’s any objections I can remove a particular photo upon request.

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Fiat CEO: only six car companies will survive

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There’s some chilling commentary from Fiat’s CEO, Sergio Marchionne, over at Reuters today.

Last week, when I did the Saab Sale Options article here at TS, there were 12 distinct companies that I mentioned, plus one wild-ass possibility and a number of un-named Russian and Chinese entities. All of these entities exist today and to varying extents, all of them should have the ability to continue existing in a rational, stable market.

This year, however, we see a market that’s becoming more rationalised than rational, and a market that’s about as far from stable as you can get. Marchionne notes that this will have consequences:

“The only way for companies to survive is if they make more than 5.5 million cars per year,” Sergio Marchionne told the European edition of Automotive News, an industry publication.

“As far as mass-producers are concerned, we’re going to end up with one American house, one German of size; one French-Japanese, maybe with an extension in the U.S.; one in Japan; one in China and one other potential European player.”

Reuters note that the only companies producing volumes of more than 5.5 million cars at the moment are Toyota, General Motors, Volkswagen, Ford Motor and Renault-Nissan.

That means Marchionne’s own Fiat is considered vulnerable, and with it the Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati and Ferrari brands. Can you imagine a world without Ferrari or Alfa Romeo?

Assuming that Toyota would pick up Subaru and that someone would pick up Hyundai, Volvo and Jeep, the following brands would have to be considered vulnerable in the medium term: Peugeot and Citroen (maybe one of those would be retained for the sake of differentiation), Maserati (currently owned by Fiat, but would you buy Fiat and keep both Maserati and Ferrari), Proton and Lotus (maybe the Lotus name will survive as an engineering arm), Chrysler, Dodge, Mitsubishi, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Skoda, Seat, Mercury, Mazda……and Saab?

Can you imagine how much more dull our motoring lives will be without this variety to look at and think over? Actually, if you’re in the US, don’t bother answering that. There’s a lot of these that don’t sell in your market already.

I think the second hand and classic car markets are going to become all the more important for enthusiasts who want to preserve a bit of variety in their driving lives.

If you think about it, this is a path we’ve been heading down for a long time now. Whilst consumers want the biggest vehicle they can afford to run, legislators want safety and efficiency. This means that in today’s world, the process of designing a car that won’t get penalised by future legislation is basically a science project.

Companies will move more and more towards a singular optimum design for aerodynamics and pedestrian safety. Companies will move more and more towards similar architectures, not only because of the savings the mega-companies will realise as a result, but also becuase as more is known about the best handling and driveability, more companies will move towards that. As the road to perfection becomes clearer, more companies will gravitate towards it. All that there will be to differentiate them is the wrapping.

What can you do to keep the possibility of variety?

1. Keep an old car running. It’ll be harder and harder to do as the years progress, but I’d like to keep at least one car in my garage that doesn’t have any electronic aides in it. Or at least no electronic safety devices. Man and machine. Mechanical engineering. Balance. Control.

2. Demand that someone make cars that ignore environmental and safety factors. Cars that engage, thrill and reward, as well as punish when something goes wrong. This is not likely to happen except for a small number of botique manufacturers that make track-day specials (Caterham, Arial, etc) but I hope they survive.

3. Hope and pray that these new mega-companies, if they do eventuate as Marchionne predicts, preserve as many name plates and as much variety as possible.

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As I write this, it’s Sunday here in Australia. I think this is a poignant enough reminder to get in my car some time today and let it rip for a while. I might even get the 900 Aero out for a few blockies, despite my thinning clutch.

I suggest you do the same.

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The curse of being small in the car industry

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In case anyone’s wondering if you can make a living off a Saab website, let me tell you that the answer is no. It’s good practice, though.

Saab are a small company, as you’ll all know, but a few stories on the web this week drove home just how small they are.

First of all, Kroum sent me this story from Yahoo Buzz, who have ranked the marques from each of the big three in Detroit in order of search requests via the Yahoo engine:

1. Ford is more than twice as popular as…
2. Saturn, which has a few more lookups than…
3. Dodge, a company that is holding a small search lead over…
4. Chevrolet, GM’s biggest brand, which is about a third more popular than…
5. Jeep, a 4×4 company, which draws a few more queries than…
6. GMC, which also makes trucks and SUVs, unlike…
7. Cadillac, the luxury mainstay, which draws a similar number of searches to…
8. Chrysler, which boasts more queries than…
9. Hummer, but the eco-warrior’s worst enemy does beat…
10. Volvo, a safety-first company that’s slightly more popular than…
11. Pontiac, which may want to bring back the Fiero if they want to stay ahead of…
12. Lincoln, Ford’s luxury arm, which struggles in Search but still fares better than…
13. Mercury, whose smattering of lookups still tops…
14. Buick, which recently parted ways with Tiger Woods, but is more popular than…
15. Saab, the swanky GM brand that is dead last in the Yahoo! Search auto wars.

I can tell you all from my own experience that on a proportional basis, this website gets remarkably less search engine traffic than many websites, with around a 40% of traffic coming from search traffic and another 40% from direct draffic (i.e. regulars). The remaining visitors coming through referrals from other sites.

Website stuff aside, then, one of the curses of beig so small is that it’s hard to get noticed. You can do something first and it will barely rate a mention.

When one of the big players in a marketplace does it, it makes for a front page story on the motoring section of the news.

Australia’s favourite car could be fuelled by a combination of grass clippings and household waste in the future under an ambitious plan by Holden to reduce its reliance on foreign oil.

Holden chairman and managing director Mark Reuss says the company will release a version of its Commodore large car that ran mostly on ethanol by 2010.

It has also started talks with a US company about building a pilot ethanol plant in Australia that turns grass clippings, woodchips and general household waste into ethanol.

Reuss says the E85 (an blended fuel that is 85 per cent ethanol and 15 per cent petrol) Commodores will be available with V6 and V8 engines and will produce more power than the current cars because of the fuel’s higher octane rating.

The full story is here and of course, there’s no mention of Saab BioPower in it – despite the fact that it’s also a GM product and despite the fact that BioPower is already on sale here and Saab owners in Sydney have been running theirs on E85 for some months now.

I would love to have a chance to turn Saab into the mouse that roared. Just once. To get people at the bigger GM players like Holden, Opel and (I’m sure) Chevrolet and Cadillac to pay Saab some respect would be very satisfying.

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Congress close to a decision done!

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The following has just been sent out via an Automotive News alert:

WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders of Congress indicated this evening they have reached agreement on a bailout plan for the Detroit 3.

The agreement is designed to provide short-term loans to General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC to prevent an industry collapse and allow a comprehensive restructuring of the companies early next year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement.

Congress is scheduled to vote on bailout legislation next week.

Democratic leaders also have reached agreement with the White House on the plan, a senior congressional aide told Reuters. The package totals between $15 billion and $17 billion, the aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Pelosi suggested she was willing to fund the emergency loans out of a $25 billion package already approved to help automakers retool for fuel-efficient vehicles. Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had previously opposed that approach, which is favored by the Bush administration.

Under the agreement, Pelosi said she would demand “a guarantee that those funds would be replenished in a matter of weeks” and that automakers would not delay work on improved fuel economy.

The loans would allow the Detroit 3 to maintain operations until President-elect Barack Obama takes office Jan. 20.

There’s more detail over at AN for those who have a subscription.

This bridge loan at least should give Saab executives a sigh of relief. In conversations that I had with Eric Geers of Saab Sweden last week, he said it was his belief that they’d have a few mnths to come up with concrete plans for the funding of future Saab projects. These plans would form a critical part of the strategic review that Saab is currently going through.

This is a positive step and good news all round.

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The inside mail: Jan-Ake Jonsson

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The following was received by Saab staff in markets outside of Sweden in the last few days. It was not originally in English, but has been translated online and then tidied up (for readability only) by me.

Thanks again to Djup Strupe for the info.

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Saab partners,

As you know, Saab has been in the media a great deal in the last few days. With this letter I offer you a personal opinion on the matters at hand, as it is important business facing our partners and customers. (The last few words lost me a little there – SW)

In accordance with the plan presented to the US Congress by General Motors, on Tuesday December 2, 2008, we are having to analyze various options regarding the financing of future Saab business.

Our goal is to set a strategic direction that we will continue to pursue and we are considering various options, including talks with the Swedish government with regard to ensuring funding for the development of our next generation of cars. So far, these talks have been very positive and constructive. Some services in the media have reported that GM will sell the brand. While this is one possibility of many, it is not the main focus. There are some interesting alternatives which we are currently considering in parallel (to this option).

We have continuously worked to build the brand over the last few years, to target and strengthen firmly the roots we have in our innovative Scandinavian heritage. Saab now has a unique premium brand and a strong global position (in terms of market positioning, I think – SW) – especially in relation to vehicle safety and environmental challenges in the field.

On the basis of this image, Saab has a very attractive customer base. The next 12 to 18 months will the biggest product expansion in the history of Saab …. (phrase I can’t understand – SW) ….we plan to introduce the new 9-5 for the beginning of 2010 and the 9-4X in early 2011.

Since you are at the “front” and in contact every day with our customers, you play a crucial role towards our success during this critical period. The speculation about the future of Saab will take some time to resolve. Please stay positive and not let yourself be distracted by rumors. We will keep you regularly informed about news.

I am convinced that we have a good solution to the current challenges and I ask you to join my trust in the Saab brand. I am firmly convinced that we will make it through these difficult times and emerge strengthened.

Yours sincerely

Jan Åke Jonsson
Saab Automobile AB