New Saab CEO sees 2010 sales doubling

We can hope, right?

The 'local' Saab dealer had a big sale of 2009/2010 MY vehicles last week. Prices were seriously tempting!

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Dunno about the conservative US market, but sales numbers from Europe indicate that it's going in that direction...

Sure, the new 9-5 is great, than the new 9-3. They are building a fabulous management and design team. Sometimes that all it takes. And ofcourse people buying Saabs, so order yours NOW!!!!

(I Am in no wat affiliated with Saab BTW, i just love my 9-3 that won several european reliability surveys. There are already too many mediocre cars, we needs the good stuff)

If only they would introduce the 9-5 estate, without any more delay. I can't justify keeping my old one running for another year-plus, having waited patiently while GM went through its financial crises and then the protracted sale negotiations in '09 and this year. Get a move on with the new estate, people, or I'm going to be forced into the arms of Audi.

Charlie gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

I can't believe that anybody who's struggling to keep a borderline scrapper running is going to go out and splurge that much money on a spankin' new A6 Avant.

So - either by "can't justify keeping my old one running" you're either looking purely at a "But it's nearly 4/5/whatever years old, and I won't be able to look my neighbours in the face" definition of "justify", or a brand spanker isn't in your sights, in which case it doesn't matter - just get a Dame Edna 9-5 estate now.

And that's before we consider that even the oldest 9-5 estate is only

11yo. Hardly border-line scrapper territory, unless maintenance has been utterly lacking.

How very presumptuous of you! You appear to know me, my life, my family, my car usage, my preferences, my finances and my priorities far better than I do. I am soooooo impressed.

My car will be 10 years old next spring, and the new estate is due next summer at the earliest. It has had a hard life, was due for replacement

2 years ago, has done 190,000+ miles, is getting unreliable and (frankly) we are all getting tired of it. I want a newish car, and have been waiting patiently for the new generation Saab.

The Audi is good, as will be the Saab - based on early press impressions. A year-old A6 Allroad will be more advanced, and will suit me better, than a year-old 9-5. If I'm going to stay with Saab, which is my preference, I want to invest in the new and not the old. We don't even know for sure that Saab will bring the estate out at all, if the

4-door doesn't really take off this year. For all those reasons, I would like to see them commit to introducing the estate sooner rather than later.

If you stop making assumptions about me, I won't make them about you; okay?

Charlie gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Is that all? My _newest_ car is twice that.

by preference

Again, not all that. My c900's somewhere around 50k more - and in daily use.

So back to preference

Dame Edna 9-5?

Looks like I was right, though.

Well, repairs on the earliest 9^5 models is rather expensive. I have already spent about 1/3 of the original price on repairs on a MY2000 estate (excluding the regular maintenance !!) and now after 180000 km the spare parts already changed once are starting to break down and have needed a second change (applies to headlight wipers, heater bypass valve, SID display, suspension parts, ignition cassette and crankshaft position sensor). At the next failure I'm tempted to send the crappy thing to the scrapyard :-(

I would never dare buying one of the first MYs of the new 9^5.

Yup, that's been very much my experience of repairs and service, and I find I now have much the same 'ultimatum' approach as you. I used to run a 1983 900 Turbo SE, which was the best (not excluding some lower-level exotica) and most reliable car I ever owned. The 9-5 quite simply ..... isn't.

As for "never dare buying", I would be quite happy to take the saloon as a precursor to the estate, and would be relaxed about buying an estate on the basis that any teething troubles for the model would have been resolved on the saloon.

I know that when I purchased my first Saab, I actually went with one that was a little newer and slightly out of my budget because the older ones (around 2003, yeah, not that old) that I was looking at apparently didn't have all the kinks ironed out. I've not regretted that decision, and this car has been a maintenance dream (2005 9-3), with only a couple things happening to it (latest one was the mirror dropping off in rapidly changing hot/cold environment, which is the only failing I can think of in the car that was caused by someone's incompetence).

On the other hand, if I somehow manage the money, I would definitely purchase the latest 9-5, even though I would consider it a sort of new beast, with a new company and such. It strikes me as a really attractive grab even if I were to risk a bit.

Aaron W. Hsu

But why use your money to improve the quality of the Saab cars?? The obvious status today is that Saab most likely does not release new cars with sufficient quality, and then why move the quality costs of a new model to the buyers?

Thus, let the Saab company contemplate for a couple of years until they can really show that they can release a new model without any serious quality problems. If they don't have the money available for this process they just have to stop producing cars. Manufacturers that do not produce products with sufficient quality simply do not deserve to survive.

Yes, but it's not really a uniquely Saab thing, though. There is a natural reluctance among all car buyers not to be the guinea-pigs for a new model. This was more pronounced among 'victims' of other companies, such as Jaguar. I had (well, it was a company car so my employers had!) one of the early 6-cylinder XJ-S, which tried our patience with the amount of time it spent back at the dealership.

Saab has a deserved reputation for reliability and respect for its customers, although this became tarnished under the GM régime. It's not unreasonable to hope/expect that normal service will be resumed now that Saab is free of the big corporation mentality. It will only survive, as a small company, by being different. That's what I like about it, and I suspect it's what keeps many (if not most) most people on this newsgroup.

The new 9-5 has been around for long enough as a design, and has done enough testing, for us to hope/expect that any early problems will have been identified and corrected.

Let's see first whether there even *are* any problems. Let's start by assuming quality control, and a determination to produce cars that we want to buy. Above all, let's see that estate on the roads soon!

Where does that come from? It is no obvious status, Saab have done really well in reliability, and repair costs are considered quite low. There is also no indication that the takeover has any effects on the quality so far. See here for a recent british survey:

Yeah, i also think Toyota should roll over and die because of that...

The innovations and the market demands are going so fast these days that even the likes of MB, VW and some other brands that always were considered to be of impeccable quality have had their share of problems

I'm sorry but i think you're being a bit simplistic about the matter.

Come on guys...

According to this web site Saab is on the top 10 list of worst brands in terms of reliability, clearly beaten by all French brands that otherwise are not well known for their reliability.

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What a load of Bullocks! THe current Saab 9-3 is still the best build Saab ever. They hardly ever fail...

Well according to

the index of 9^3 from 2002 onwards is 128.33, for the 9^3 MY98-02 the index is 121.06, for 9^5 MY98-01 the index is 116.46 while for 9^5 MY01-05 the index is 96.96. (a higher number is worse). Nothing here that shows the 9^3 to be superior.

The ranking of JD Powers (see for instance

) classes the 2009 9^3 reliability as "Mediocre". Actually the ranking of MY09 is worse than the ranking of MY07, however both still "Mediocre". According to this ranking the 9^3 is slightly better than the 9^5, but both are in the grade rage 4-5 on a 10-grade scale. Note that the reliability ranking is based on accumulated three-year periods which means that the quality of the 9^3 seems to be degrading rather than improving. So where are the numbers that prove your statement?

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Common sence an what is reported from the workshops and the different club-pages. Also, the German ADAC statistics shows that the Saabs are in the better half... Besides, I don't give a lot about these statistics, coz there might be many different reason, for being stranded...

There seems to be no Saab figures in the ADAC statistics for the last 5 years, see for instance

Where have you found the ADAC statistics if it is not on the ADAC web site?