General Motors has just issued this video footage of the Saab Factory and Museum in Trollhattan.
As you might expect, Saab are in the news a bit at the moment given that they’re under strategic review. GM has issued this stock footage so that news outlets, etc, have current imagery to use for their news stories.
The film is silent, but it gives you a good look at the factory operations as they are right now. The installation of the dash is particularly interesting (I remember being wowed by it during my factory tour last year.)
The film goes for around six minutes in total. The first half covers the factory and the second half gives a brief look at some of the cars in the Saab Museum.
I just got a heads-up about this new video from Saab with a message asking that I wish you all a Merry Christmas from them.
This is a groovy little ad in the tradition of the old Saab Vs ads from times past.
It was shot recently (the ad, not the reindeer) in Kiruna, in northern Sweden.
Merry Christmas indeed!!!
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And by the way, if you want to see some excellent Saab stuff on YouTube, the SaabLoweBrindfors channel is the place to visit. They’re the ad agency for Saab in Europe.
There’s nothing to type here as I’m still in shock. Any information on who these absolute legends are would be most welcome.
I tip my hat to their dedication.
Thanks Eduard and Greg Abbott for the link.
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And here’s a freeze-frame of the jump. Any guesses as to how high?
That really is somewhat amazing. Thankfully there’s no visible details on the tags so as long as you keep white-T-shirt guy out of the dealership your warranty should be OK
Again, just fantastic entertainment (though I’m glad it’s not my car!)
My Youtube subscription updater shot me an email overnight to tell me that Monkeyknifefight13 put a new video online.
That’s always an exciting thing because Monkeyknifefight13 works for McCann Erickson, Saab’s advertising agency. His latest video is the new Saab ad for the US market, an ad for XWD called Read The Road.
Embedded video isn’t working too well on this site at the moment, so I can’t post the video here in the article.
Here’s a cool little clip. Hopefully it might turn into a cool little series of clips.
It’s supposed to be a Saab spin on Knight Rider and whilst I’m not sure how well it succeeds at that (then again, would you want to? Not even Knight Rider succeeds at Knight Rider in 2008), it’s very well made and is a lot of fun to watch. The big drawcard for me is that it gives you a fantastic look at one of the Saabiest Saabs in history – a Saab 99 GL.
It was a special treat for me personally, too, as the car had the same white exterior and green interior color combination as my old Saab 99 Turbo.
Thanks to Peter for the link, and whoever you are, please feel free to give us more.
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I’m having some trouble hosting video here at the moment, so you have two options:
1) watch it in small screen using the video embedded in the right sidebar —–>
I’ve enquired as to when some video of the roof in action might be available, and have been told that it won’t be in the near future. It seems that they haven’t sorted out those patent issues yet.
I got an email overnight from the guys at GM’s hipster site, igotshotgun.com. They’ve recently done a piece on the Saab Performance Team, showing that Swedes in sunnies can be hip, too.
It’s short, sweet and full of smoke.
Enjoy.
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And if you’re feeling like a little more SPT, here’s the video I shot in Sweden last year at Kinnekulle Raceway. It’s even got me playing bass guitar in the soundtrack!
Last weekend I attended a drive day sponsored by Saab Australia at the GM Holden proving grounds at Lang Lang, in south eastern Victoria.
Because Saab Australia only has one Turbo X to act as a photographic model AND press car, they didn’t want us car club hoons driving it at high speeds on a dirt track. To make sure we got something memorable out of it, though, they brought in Peter Johansson to take us for a spin.
During the week, Peter is the lead engineer working for GM on XWD applications for front-wheel drive vehicles. He’s third-gen Saab, his grandfather working on tooling for the very first Saabs and his dad working for them as an engineer as well. Peter and his Dad came up with some early AWD technology, which they sold to a company called Haldex in Sweden. See where this is going?
On the weekends, Peter drives rally cars. The AWD technology that he and his dad developed was primarily a response to his own needs in rallying. Not only can he build this stuff, he can really use it too.
There were four events on the program. I’ll get to the other three in another post, but this was the final event that our group took part in – Peter Johansson taking us for a hot lap on the GM proving ground dirt track in the Saab Turbo X.
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Peter got to speeds of up to around 170 km/h on the back section of the track and if you’ve never been that quick on dirt, let me tell you it’s quite an experience!
The car was an auto, much to Peter’s disappointment, but he still gave it a pretty good run.
This really was the highlight of the day. The car’s incredibly solid and to see it in the hands of an expert was quite a revelation. We did two laps of filming at the end of the day and the brake rotors were glowing at the end of them!
I hope you enjoyed the video. There’s plenty more to come from the weekend.
