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A Requiem For Saab
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that auto enthusiasts across the country are dismayed by the news that General Motors is planning to shut down Saab, the Swedish carmaker it bought two decades ago, after a deal to sell it fell apart. Even with its modest and steadily declining sales, Saab, an acronym for Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget, or Swedish Airplane Company, long stood out as a powerful brand in spite of itself. 'It wasn't designed to be a fashion statement,' says Ron Pinelli, president of Autodata, which tracks industry statistics. 'It was designed to provide transportation under miserable weather conditions.' Many Saab owners consider the brand's glory days to be the 1980s, when Americans began buying cars again after a recession and energy crisis. 'The cars were communicative,' says Pinelli. 'They didn't try to numb the experience like cars do today.' The cars had odd touches and appealed to those who appreciate the unconventional. Swedish engineers assumed drivers would be wearing gloves, so they designed big buttons for the dashboard. Though the cars were compact, with long hoods and short rear ends, there was plenty of headroom inside. Now Saab, a brand that once had one of the clearest identities in the industry, seems headed for extinction just as automakers are searching for more distinctive designs to help set them apart. 'It's a shame that Saab is a victim,' adds Pinelli."
My mother's father was the second Saab dealer in North America.
My father and I worked on every Saab in the southern half of our state from the '60s until 1980. My dad was known for converting '65-up models from the 3-cylinder engines to the later V4's, and he also did special effects for the one Bond film in which 007 drove a Saab. Saab offered to build a dealership for my father, but he was ready to retire... so they sold the franchise to a real loser, and stopped selling us parts.
The Saab 96 was so far ahead of its time that nobody has yet caught up to it. It was the stiffest, strongest & safest 2000-lb. car ever built.
This is probably my last chance to tell my Saab story in public.
In 1973 I was living in Sweden. Just before returning to the USA I bought a new Saab Combi Coupe. That is the hatchback model that later became the famous Saab 900. 73 was the first model year and they were not marketing them to the USA yet. I had mine shipped to the USA when it was only 2 weeks old. My oh my. Remember the adage about not buying version 1.0 of anything? I should have remembered that.
On the very first day of driving the manual shift lever jumped out of 2nd gear, hit me in the wrist and cracked a bone.
Back in the USA, my clutch failed. I took it to the Saab dealer for a free warranty replacement. The new one failed; and the next and the next... That car went through 7 clutches in one year. Once, the new clutch failed only 6 miles from the dealer. It wasn't me. I have long experience with manual transmissions and I don't ride the clutch.
About a year and a day from new (with a 12 month warranty) I drove through a puddle. The car stopped instantly. The engine refused to turn. Upon taking the engine apart, we found water in the pistons and all the connecting rods bent like pretzels. It turns out that the air intake was low to the ground with a 90 degree elbow. Mine was mounted with the elbow facing forward, like a water scoop if one ever hit a puddle. There was a factory bulletin to rotate that elbow 180 degrees, but my dealer just shrugged. After 7 visits to the dealer he didn't feel responsible for doing the work or for informing me about the bulletins.
Still more. Upon further inspection we found that there were no retaining rings on the piston king pins. The pins had been wearing grooves in the side of the engine block. If I hadn't driven into the puddle, the block would have exploded soon; probably while I was speeding down the interstate.
The Saab regional office refused to talk to me or even listen to my story. I sold that Saab, 13 months old for 10% of my purchase price leaving me with nothing to do but Saab saab saab.
You mean the same United Auto Workers union that the very successful Ford has worked with for decades? Amazing how that union has brought down GM, but somehow the same union represents workers at the successful Ford.
Scott Adams made fun of the tendency of management to blame the least powerful individuals for management failing.. The UAW is a convenient scapegoat for right-wing talking heads, but the decision to manufacture poorly-made cars that do not meet a market need is purely management's.
It's not the current union contracts. It's the retirees.
Ford has pretty much maintained their smaller-to-being-with market share. So because of market growth worldwide, Ford is selling more cars than they used to.
Unlike GM. GM is a shodow of its former self. They're selling a lot fewer cars than they used to. The company is a lot smaller, with much smaller cash flow. But GM has huge numbers of retirees from its heyday, along with probably a huge number of early-retirees from the days GM was shrinking and laying off workers.
And all those retirees are on defined-benefit retirement plans.
So, GM is fucked.
Their loss of market share made their union retirement plans the millstone around their neck that sunk them. Just because that didn't happen to Ford doesn't make it false.
God, what horrendously weak "logic" you used there.
Why?
Saab was badge-engineering well before GM got involved. They used Triumph Dolomite engines in the 99 and Ford V4 engines in the Sonatas, The Saab 600 was a Lancia Delta, and the 9000 a Fiat Croma/Type Four.
Apart from a few of the very early models, Saabs were, mechanically at least, generic eurocars.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
What trounced both of them was an old Model A Ford one of the guys had that still cranked and ran. I thought that was funny.
If you actually consider what the vast majority of road were like back when the Model A was produced, you'd think nothing of it. Cars from those days were >all essentially off-road vehicles, because if you lived anywhere but the center of a big city, you were going to be driving down muddy, rutted cart tracks. Seriously, look at the designs: low gearing and high clearance, the lot of them.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Big buttons for people wearing gloves? That's the best contribution the author can come up with in his requiem?
How about the ignition being in the center console so there's one less thing to split your kneecap in a crash? How about the collapsing steering column, once again helping to avoid turning the steering wheel into a death machine? How 'bout the fact that my '88 had a fully-modern EFI system with intake manifold injectors, 2 HO2S, and a MAF sensor, not that crap throttle-body, barometric pressure based crap everyone else had? How about having 9007 lights with reflector housings instead of those sealed-beam light scatterers?
I live in Central PA, and that car was unstoppable in the snow. The only thing I've driven that was close is my Jetta, and that has 4-wheel ABS and traction control. The SAAB certainly did not. And I'm no slipmatic driver either.
Ah yes.... because car makers have some inexplicable oath of fealty to the status quo that prevents them from marketing (say) a car with the fabled 100mpg carburetor and driving their competitors out of business overnight.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
And against Moose. Hitting a moose is unlike hitting any other animal because of how high they stand. It's more or less like hitting a 2 ton wrecking ball.
http://www.saabhistory.com/2006/12/22/saab-900-moose-test-footage-1997/
And Saab was the best recourse in arguments against "But I NEED an SUV because I live in Michigan in the snow." Really, because the Swedish get away with a Saab.
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Then there's that old urban legend of the old Saab owner challenging a Porsche owner to a race... in Reverse.
Saab owner shuts his car off. Rolls it forward, drops the clutch with the car in reverse and the car roars to life.
He soundly beats the Porsche owner with his 3 forward gears as the engine runs backwards.
Good ole two strokes.
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And a list of Saab innovations:
* 1958: The GT 750 is the first car fitted with seatbelts as standard.[26]
* 1963: Saab becomes the first volume maker to offer diagonally-split dual brake circuits.
* 1969: Saab creates an ignition system near the gearbox, instead of behind the steering wheel like most cars.
* 1970: Saab introduces a world-first - headlamp wipers and washers.
* 1971: Heated front seats are introduced, the first time in the world they are fitted as standard.
* 1971: Saab develops the impact-absorbing, self-repairing bumper.
* 1976: Saab was the first manufacturer to produce a turbo engine with wastegate to control boost.
* 1978: Saab introduces another 'world-first,' the passenger compartment air filter (pollen filter).
* 1980: Saab introduces Automatic Performance Control (APC), and an anti-knock sensor that allowed higher fuel economy and the use of lower grade fuel without engine damage.
* 1981: Saab introduces the split-field side mirror. This reduces the drivers blind spot.
* 1982: Saab introduces asbestos-free brake pads.
* 1983: Saab introduces the 16-valve turbocharged engine
* 1985: Saab pioneers direct ignition, eliminating the distributor and spark plug wires.
* 1991: Saab introduces a 'light-pressure' turbo.
* 1991: Saab is the first manufacturer to offer CFC-free air-conditioning.
* 1991: Saab develops its 'Trionic' engine management system, equipped with a 32-bit micro-processor.
* 1993: Saab introduces the 'Sensonic clutch' and the 'Black Panel', later to be called the 'Night Panel'.
* 1993: Saab develops the 'Safeseat' rear passenger protection system.
* 1994: Saab introduces the 'Trionic T5.5' engine management system, its processor is a Motorola 68332.
* 1995: Saab presents an asymmetrically turbocharged V6 at the Motor Show in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
* 1996: Saab introduces active head restraints (SAHR), which help minimize the risk of whiplash.
* 1997: Saab introduces Electronic Brake-force Distribution
* 1997: Saab fits ventilated front seats to their new 9-5.
* 1997: Saab introduces ComSense; an alert delay feature that reduces the risk of distraction by briefly postponing lower priority alerts when the brakes or indicators are activated
* 2000: Saab introduces Saab Variable Compression, an engine in which the compression ratio is varied by tilting the cylinder head in relation to the pistons.
* 2002: Saab developed ReAxs System provides crisp steering feedback and contributes to enhanced driving stability in curves
* 2003: Saab introduces CargoSET; automatic storage well retraction for the convertible, a two-step tonneau action for quicker soft-top deployment
* 2008: Saab introduces Cross-wheel drive, an advanced all-wheel drive system with eLSD.
GM and so many other corporations are having problems because they have focused on maximizing short-term profit as the absolute top priority, and either forgotten their product, or sacrificed the product (with blind cost-cutting) in the name of profit.
They have completely forgotten that producing products and services that people want to have is the way to generate profit in the long term.
I'm not a fanboi, but Apple is a great example of a company that started with the right idea, lost their way in the '90s and found it again in the '00s.