RIP Saab (A Thread for Saab Lovers)

FiestaST

FiestaST

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RIP Saab: Swedish brand officially dead

Trollhättan, Sweden - The Saab car brand was officially dumped on the scrap yard of automobile history on Tuesday when the trademark's most recent user said it would give up trying to recycle the venerable name.

National Electric Vehicle Sweden, which was created to take over the assets of Saab Automobiles in 2012 following the carmaker's bankruptcy, built Saab cars for a few months before throwing in the towel in May 2014.

Since then, NEVS has failed to persuade trademark owners the Saab aero and defence group to let it continue to use the Saab name for its own future generation of electric cars.

NEVS said it will base its first electric vehicle, to launch next year, on the Saab 9-3 platform but will use its own name as the trademark.

“That means that NEVS will no longer use the Saab trademark,” it said.

The first Saab car rolled off the conveyer belt in 1949 and the brand, sportier than Swedish rival Volvo, has gained cult status among many car fans worldwide.

The Saab group sold the vehicle division to General Motors in 1990 which then sold it on to Dutch company Spyker in 2010.

Since Saab's 2012 liquidation, NEVS has used its Saab assets and Swedish know-how to develop a range of electric models with the help of Chinese capital.

In late 2015 NEVS won a contract to supply 250 000 cars to Chinese rental company Panda New Energy.

http://www.iol.co.za/motoring/industry-news/rip-saab-swedish-brand-officially-dead-2037184

http://www.wheels24.co.za/News/end-of-a-swedish-auto-icon-its-all-over-for-saab-cars-20160622

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Always liked them....
 
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Used to drive one about 13 years ago, always enjoyed it
 
My first car was a Saab 99 Turbo. Wrote it off one night after I hit a patch of black ice on my way home and rolled it down a hill :eek:

Apparently I've got a 900 sitting in a shed somewhere that his father left me.
 
Very reliable cars I heard but wasn't the big drawback the fact that if something did break it was hellish expensive to fix due to part availability?
 
What a shame, always loved the brand. Never had a chance to own one.
 
Top 10 rarest used cars - top 100 used cars 2017

Rarity doesn’t always force a car’s value through the roof. We highlight used buys that are worth hunting hard for

Now this ought to be high risk.

Buy an extensively equipped, complex car from a defunct
 car maker. Buy the last model that this defunct maker developed, complete with teething troubles. Pay a surprisingly high price for 
said car, despite the absence
 of a dealer network, an apparently uncertain parts supply and a tiny constituency of people who might actually want one when the time comes to sell it. But if I had £10,000
 to splash, a Saab 9-5 might just win my money – even though
I know there are better cars to be had for the same price, just
as there were when it was new. And back then, between 2010 and 2012, there was a network, a parts supply and the spluttering flame of a future for Saab.

Most of us know how Saab’s most exciting new model in decades came to be cut short in its prime. Saab’s owner General Motors was months away from launching the all-new 9-5 when the Lehman Brothers bank collapsed, triggering a monumental recession that took GM down with
it. In return for a US government bailout, GM had to agree to sell or close several brands, Saab included. Opportunistic manoeuvring from Spyker supercar boss Victor Muller allowed him to buy the company, part-funded by Russian oligarch money and an EU loan underwritten by the Swedish government, which shrewdly required the Saab parts operation as collateral. The money allowed Muller to launch the 9-5, to mixed but generally positive reviews. It wasn’t a BMW-beater, but it wasn’t so far off that you couldn’t justify
 the temptation.

Which is where I am with the idea of buying one today, five years after the last example was driven from the mouth of the soon-to-be silenced Trollhättan factory. If you like variety in your cars, and enjoy the colour that every brand brings
to the kaleidoscope of automotive offerings (and, indeed, just plain
like Saabs), then the thought of
 that last 9-5 departing the stalled production line is a sad one. It’s why I look at a 9-5 with a mixture of regret and admiration – the admiration stemming from the fact that it’s a crisply handsome, distinctively proportioned saloon and pleasingly Saab-like with it. GM was a frequently frustrating custodian of this nuanced brand, but the last 9-5 was a good effort and one that the Swedish company could easily have built on.

Buying a Saab would be a link to all of this, a last physical connection to what is now a dead brand. Except that, improbably, there is a pulse.

It’s faint, it’s distant and it should not be allowed to fuel romantic musings of a Saab rebirth. But this pulse is the reason why a Saab 9-5 today can be a better car than a Saab 9-5 yesterday. Proof of this is to be found in the out-of-the-way village of Great Waltham in Essex, where Saab (and Volvo and Jaguar) specialists the Chelmsford Car Company can be found. That’s where we happen to witness the arrival of a pinky-purple box branded ‘Orio’. In it are parts requested 48 hours ago for a 9-5, the order effectively fulfilled by Sweden’s Ministry of Finance, which took over the shares in Saab Parts, owned by the government. Now renamed Orio, this parts operation usually supplies within 24 hours, says Elliot Sandat, a director of the garage.


Sandat explains that Orio is not only an efficient deliverer of parts but is also adding to the back catalogue, by acquiring tooling from suppliers such as Bosch and Valeo for whom Saab volumes are too low. Orio can now provide an amazing 22,000 items. Just as remarkable, and the reason why a Saab 9-5 can function more effectively today than when it was new, is that the parts service continues to develop software updates. A major one emerged in February last year, says Sandat, which is why cars fitted with sat-nav no longer default to a Belgian map and therefore display the wrong time during the UK summer. The update also allows the cars to run more smoothly.

We discover all this before taking the 40,000-mile wheel of a 2.0 petrol urbo Aero with all-wheel drive. This is the best 9-5, reckons Sandat, and his low-miles example is worth about £12,495. Many gravitate towards the top-of-the-range 2.8 V6, he says, but it’s thirstier, not vastly faster and slightly less dependable. We could also have picked a 2.0 diesel from the garage’s stock: these are typically about £10,000 and there are plenty of 9-5s out there for usefully less.

Were it not for lightly creased leather and a steering wheel slightly shined with use, this 2010 example could pass for a two-year old. There are no creaks or rattles, it pulls cleanly and responsively and feels reassuringly fit. The exceptions are the heating and ventilation, whose green LED pin lights randomly flash confirmation of a half-failed system, and an infotainment system that doggedly displays the Saab griffin and nothing else.

Sandat says this car has yet 
to be ‘reflashed’ – an electronic reinvigoration that may also improve the rudely abrupt downshifts from the automatic transmission. This nevertheless provides unexpectedly strong acceleration in league with the 214bhp turbo four. This engine issues fairly unprepossessing sounds, but quietly enough not to disappoint for long. The ride quality is similar: as firm as I remember it, but firmer than it needs to be for a car like this, but tolerable. The pay-off is relatively slight and experienced in the form of limited body roll rather than crisply incisive agility.

No nonsense, understated, robust capability is what you get, rather
than a stellar driving experience. You’ll also enjoy a distinctive design, plentiful space, sumptuous seats and a dashboard more special than its monotone finish suggests. Fixing that was on Muller’s unrealised to-do list.

More than all this, though, is the regret-tinged pleasure to be had from owning Saab’s last throw of
the dice. At least as heart-warming is the knowledge that a small, ex-Saab team in Sweden is there to keep your rarity alive.

Saab 9-5 Turbo 4 Aero

Built 2010-2012 Price range £4700-£12,500 We’d pay £8500 One we found A black 2011 2.0-litre petrol with 72,000 miles, slightly over budget at £9995. Comes with full service history

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/...op-10-rarest-used-cars-top-100-used-cars-2017

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I've had two Saabs, including a 9-5 Aero. Money pits, but lovely cars and very damn quick.
 
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