I think he is a typical Saab owner, at least typical of the Saab owners who hang on this forum. Read the posts and see just how much work these Saab owner are doing on their own.
I highly doubt
Tex - I notice you did not use the words "reliable" and "durable" to describe the "two true Saab vehicles". I did not hesitate to buy a 12 year old Classic 900 turbo. I have not bought a 9-3 because of the reliability and repair cost issues. The electronics have gotten too complex and too expensive to fix on your own. This makes the car very expensive to repair once the warranty expires. This is just one of the reasons Saabs don't retain their resale value.
Who are you kidding? I don't care who made your car. A car older than 10 years and with 100k+ miles on the odometer, will invariably have more repair issues than any new car. The fact that most here happily fix their older Saabs regularly, suggests that they need fixing regularly (not exactly a good sign of quality). According to the JD Powers ratings, initial quality marks for 1993 Saab 900 are actually similar to Saabs from 1997 and 2004. That suggests that Saab quality hasn't really gone up nor has it gone down (these marks are generally all relative to their contemporaries).
Agreed, but this could be said of virtually any car in its class today. Funny thing is, 20 years ago, you would probably have heard the same exact comment from older mechanics..."Arrrggh, the Saabs these days are too complex to fix. I'll stick to my 96". My point is that it's natural for people to resist change, particularly as we get older.
Unfortunately, Saabs historically have had poor resale value. While it wasn't until more recent years that these kinds of figures began to be more accurately tracked, it's been historically accepted that Saabs will lose their value quicker than others in its class (namely Lexus, Infinity, Mercedes et al). And that can be said even of Saabs pre-GM.
The evidence suggests that there is more to quantifying resale value than simply a vehicle's expected reliability over a given period. For example, while Mercedes and BMW retain their value better than Saabs, their longterm reliability is not significantly better than Saabs. This is more likely related to the fact that Saabs serve a much smaller, less mainstream market than Mercedes and BMW, making the resale market even smaller. All else equal, decrease the demand and you decrease the market price.
With certified pre-owned Saabs which carry a 100k mile warranty (at least in the US), any reliability problems become manufacturer problems (within that term).
As far as the new 9-3's are concerned, the verdict is still out. Little in the way of long term reliability information is available about the car (having been introduced only in late 2002). Intitial quality data places it above average, similar to BMWs.
I've just got the Powers survey 2005 (UK) in Auto Express. The 9-5 get position 26 out of 100 cars, the 9-3 get position 48, i.e. it just escapes the bottom half mark, though ahead of Vauxhall Vectra which gets a miserable position 67.
A 9-3 owner comment was: "Not really a 'sports saloon". Perhaps the Saab advertising has backfired somewhat. High running costs pulls it down.
I remember that some years back the Saab 9000 got a near top position, but maybe the competition has caught up. Now you find Honda, Lexus and Skoda! taking top positions.
To be viable as a manufacturer, Saab has to sell a substantial number of cars, that is cars that appeal to a lot of people, i.e. not niche cars. A car such as Classic 900 may have enthusiastic followers, but that car wouldn't sell at a profit if it was produced today. It quite often happens like that; fortunate owners of special models count themselves lucky that they got there just in time. My 1993 9000 CSE is still like new, while similar aged Ford Mondeos are rust buckets.
A large percentage of these ratings has to do with computer problems (e.g. BMW). Every once and awhile I have some problems with my 2004 9-3 InfoDisplay but nothing major. Mechanically, no problems at all. So I am very happy with my SAAB (my first). I consider myself a stickler for quality so I am not glossing my eyes over.
Why have the economics changed so much? Why did SAAB have to sell to GM? It should be cheaper to make cars with computer-based engineering and outsourcing major parts like a unibody. If SAAB was still independent, they could still buy epsilon unibodies and ecotec engines, no?
I think that SAAB cost per car may have increased under bureaucratic GM control. I would be very interested to see an activity-based cost accounting of SAAB. The SAAB brand should be managed much better in the USA.
Yes, You have to be careful not to read too much into Powers survey. Like everything else, it has also been 'dummed down'. Earlier reports, gave more information. Especially number of cars in the survey. Cars that tend to be company cars usually get poorer results because owners haven't chosen the cars themselves and garages may be a bit more superficial with company cars. The 9-3 SS get it's best scores for comfort 10'th place, and it's worst scores 83'th place for running cost. Reliability problems, apparently, although one would think that it would be witin warranty? Garages and dealer attitudes plays a large part in the survey; one reason that Skoda scores so high.
Au contrair, mon amie Tex. All of my cars are older and are highly reliable. I perform an archaic ritual to keep them running with very few breakdowns. It's called "Preventive Maintenance", a relic of a concept from days gone by.
Compare that to many folks I know who are in and out of their high-buck service department at the stealership with infantile failures and other regular repairs. Age and mileage does not equate to poor reliability. The original design has a lot more to do with reliability.
Yes, my dad drove them. Unfortunately my dad's last one, a gorgeous 89 900s was totalled by a drunk as it sat parked on the street overnight. :-( After that he got a Ford truck from his company (utilitarian but not fun).
An ex-gf and I shared a black 92 900 convertible for about 3 years. Now that was a fun car in the summer!
OK...so what's wrong with JD Powers? They actually have a fairly good view on product quality. Unlike consumer reports they do no actual testing, they rely strictly on large samples of direct customer feedback. Afterall, aren't customers the ultimate product testers? So when you question JDP, you are really questioning Saab owners themselves.
Coming from a statistical/analytical background I don't see much objective value in anecdotal remarks like "i've owned 10 Saabs and they've all run like a dream". For every guy that says that, you can find another who will tell you the complete opposite. As always, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. That's why I would tend to trust summary statistical data (as in JDP's approach) over anecdotal comments.
Ha! I have to admit, I'm intringued by your "archaic ritual". Please describe.
Don't be shy...do tell this humble fool the secret recipe for "preventive maintenance"
What's easy for one is not so easy (nor perhaps feasible) for another. Smart people tend to forget this. IOW, what is easy and simple for you, may not be so for another. So shelling out cash to the mechanic is a fairly easy fix compared with attempting to learn about the technical aspects of cars. As for me, I wouldn't mind learning and working on my own car, but I
1) lack adequate time and 2) currently live in a development where I'm not permitted to work on my car.
Neither the statistics, nor the known issues, nor the anecdotal comments I've seen in this group bear this out. I've seen estimates here in this group that the cost of upkeep on an older Saab (say a '93 900) runs beween $900-$2000 USD/annum. Are you saying the expected cost to upkeep such a car is significantly lower? Even if you do the work yourself there is such thing as opportunity cost...in that, you could be doing soemthing else more enjoyable, like going for a ride in the car.
Original designs only allow for a car to hit so many pot holes, to suffer through so many freezing cold winters, to go on only so many slow drives on hot summer days, or sit in stop/go traffic for so many hours. These are harsh real world environments that take their toll on anything mechanical.
Yes, but the methodology is faulty. If I buy a cheap econobox, I'll tolerate rattles, squeaks, minor problems, because it's _expected_. If I drop a chunk of cash on a 9-5, I expect every seam in the upholstery to be straight, and if it's not, I'd complain about it. The guy with the econobox, well, he'll complain if the door falls off. An extreme example, but satisfaction without considering context is meaningless.
Please don't try to make my points for me.
My point is, a Saab will have a higher standard of expectations than many other brands, so simply comparing complaints without taking the difference in expectations into account isn't realistic.
No, based on comments here, it's more 10:1 than 1:1 as you postulate.
JDP's approach is a collection of anecdotal comments.
First you discount anecdotal evidence, then you parrot it when it suits you.
My '86 900, in the 6 months I've owned it, is up to $300.00. And most of that was a brake master cylinder that failed due to previous owner neglect.
Many of us enjoy doing the work ourselves. So the "cost" of which you speak does not exist. Cheap therapy, as Fred said.
And yet, a properly designed suspension can deal with that better than one that's treated as a commodity platform multi-purpose beancounter-dictated solution.
What's your goal here, Tex? What do you see this group as, and what do you hope to get out of participating here? All I see so far is hostility and noise.
One day last week I saw a car in my (900) rear view mirror with a grille very similar to a 9-3 Sport Sedan, but it had an unfamiliar (to me) badge on the hood. When the car was next to me at a traffic light it turned out to be a Chevrolet Nubira. When I did some Googling I found that there once was a Daewoo Nubira and Daewoos are now sold as Chevrolets over here. So, there's your connection, it's all one GM soup.
True, but I like doing it, it's a hobby. Also, I do not have a lot of confidence in a Saab garage sales person who asked what type of Saab I had, after I asked for some Saab 96 parts; "yes sir, a '96 but what type - a 900?".
That is quite exaggerated, the figures more look like the annual service/repair costs for a 9-5. All of my older Saabs (99, C900, 9000) have easily be maintained below 500 USD per year (excl. tires) in average and they have been at ages up to 15 years and mileages up to
Don't know, link does not work... It was like this one, but not the same
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The car I saw had the Chevrolet badge on the hood, where the Griffin is on a Saab, not on the grille. When I saw the car coming up behind me, my first thought was: hey, a 9-3, but it turned out to be a Chevrolet rebadged Daewoo.
Perhaps the same reason a person will buy a Zenith TV, because their grandpa told them how good the ones he always got were, nevermind that now days it's just a name slapped on someone else's stuff.
Which is one point I was trying to make, I don't think the several dozen to a couple hundred people on this group are nessesarily typical Saab owners, we're mostly the enthusiasts, which unfortunatly is not normally a very large piece of the market. Few companies care much about the people who covet their products of a decade or two ago, their goal is simply to sell new products.
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