What to buy?

But Volvo is Ford nowadays. Just look at the striking similarity between the Volvo V50 and the new Ford Focus Estate:

Perhaps that means that the Ford Focus isn't such a bad car after all? But it's still a Ford, a common garden car.

Perhaps. But I had a chance to drive a Focus last year (my daughter received it as a loaner while her 9000 was in the body shop last year). I must say I was rather taken aback. It was not as crappy a car as I would have expected. It felt quite solid and was completely acceptable, though it was fairly new and so had not accumulated many miles.

Same here, used a new one (only 1300 km) from a rental company in Spain. Not a bad experience... but then... all my really classic SAABs have Ford engines...

...and many Fords now have a Mazda engine. My Ford has a Yamaha engine ;-)

Walt Kienzle

1991 9000T (still on the disabled list) 1990 Ford Taurus SHO

I don't have a 9-5, but a 9000. It has a simple info display: average mpg, miles left in tank, charge Voltage. What use is a SID above that?

The SID on the 9-5 is used for a bunch of stuff, most annoying when it goes out:

It's the only visible indicator of what's going on in the audio system, what station it's on, CD track, etc

The main system/car clock is in there as well

Both of these features suffer considerably when the SID breaks down.

But then again, that's not the point. The design is faulty. Saab knows it but has not redesigned it and sold me a replacement part that they knew had a high failure rate.

Again, I sell electronic components to the auto industry. They ask me to start paying for recalls if my parts have a failure rate of over 20 parts per MILLION into a system that is looking at something like 100 ppm. Given that there are web sites, bbs postings and news group postings on this topic all over the place, I can assure you that their failure rate on this device is WAY higher than that.

Tells you what radio station you're listening to for one thing (since the radio doesn't have its own display). And the time (since there is no clock).

It's not a bad design idea, integrating all the displays in the car. It is just a poorly executed one...