Slashdot Mirror
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."
Saab Story.
*rimshot*
1. Who owned SAAB before?
2. If it is such a good brand, why don't those previous owners buy it back?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Really? Does this belong on /.? Where is all the fanfare for Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Plymouth & Saturn? Companies come and go. New ones will come along and replace them.
I've got an idea... how about everybody who liked Saabs go out and order a Fisker Karma or the Tesla Model S!
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
It's GPL! If you like it that much, just fork it and the community will... wait, oh, I see. Sorry, never mind.
You can attach boosters to anything. It just costs more. -
Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07, @12:26PM
It was GM themselves that turned down the offer from Spyker - seemingly a company that is in financial difficulty doesnt need the money. The timing of the decision speaks volumes as well.
the latest news is that there is another bid as of today from Spyker, so the nail isnt quite in the coffin just yet.
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article6321526.ab
GM has woefully mismanaged SAAB, played accounting games and not used the company in the way it should.
SAAB has come up with fantastic technology over the years especially around safety, I think the engineers there have alot to offer in the future for environmental cars.
I've never driven a Saab and have no opinion on how they fared in this way.
But what is it with Americans preferring numb cars that totally insulate them from what the car is doing? They all seem to like very mushy suspensions where the car tips around corners, and automatic transmissions. Then, because they drive very tippy cars with very high centre of gravity, they're deathly afraid of corners, and they nearly stop every time there's the slightest bend in the road.
It seems the automotive equivalent of removing all the taste from one's food. Sure, it'll still keep you alive, but you go through your life eating bland and boring food.
I lose any interest in the brand the moment an American company buys it, because I know that the quality of the "American version" isn't going to hold a candle to the Swedish version. Once the Americans get their grubby little hands on it and start to try to integrate it into their manufacturing and supply chain and QC practices, the car's gonna just be another Chevy.
If I wanted a Chevy, I'd buy a chevy.
I'm finally getting ready to replace my '84 with 300k miles on it. When I do, I'm buying used, and I'm buying the "last Swedish year." I'm not touching any GM Saabs or Ford Volvos.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
"Is that why they built a bunch of intensely front-heavy FWD vehicles with atrocious understeer?"
"They also had reverse-mounted engines"
They stopped making these cars in the mid 80's.
Neither of those criticisms applies to the cars that they make today.
From the linked article, Saab had a highlight of sales at 48,000 and change in 1986, when they were a post-recession yuppie fad. They were always bad cars, and articles like this one reminiscing about the "glory days" of Saab are a bit myopic. They rusted out in key places, like where the control arms for the front suspension bolts to the body. They're a nightmare to work on, with the engine spun backwards in the engine bay. The "tight steering" meant nothing when coupled with a body that flexed terribly, especially on the convertible models. Big buttons for people wearing gloves? That's the best contribution the author can come up with in his requiem? The fact is that people don't want to spend huge money on mediocre cars. Saab was purchased to be placed in GM's lineup as a luxury foreign brand, much like Volvo's purchase by Ford. The new cars were built on better platforms than the ones Saab could engineer, with all the quirkiness still intact for buyers with too much money and not enough common sense. That GM can't give the company away, and can't make money selling weird cars is proof of this. The year GM purchased Saab they killed off Oldsmobile. Saab was selling ~40,000 cars per year, Olds was selling 250,000 cars per year. They killed a brand that made them far more money in order to have a more upscale image, only to find out what people really imagined the cars to be. They made a Saab out of a Blazer, they made a Saab out of a Subaru, and I'm sure if some marketing doofus thought it was a good idea they would have done the same with a Daewoo as well. Saab had some interesting ideas over the years, but they were cars that were constantly broken and difficult to work on. I've spent many years as an auto tech and diagnostician fixing these things. I'll always have many fond memories of working on Saabs. They've brought me so much laughter over the years.
SAAB was once quirky and bizarre, the choice of folks who needed some particular features. Then people started buying it, not for the suitability for cold weather or whatever, but precisely because it was quirky. Then the customers even stopped caring about the quirkiness and started buying them for the nameplate. Sure, there were a few folks who needed some strange features, but for the most part, people only cared about the name. GM, though not having the brightest business acumen, sought to capitalize. Instead of quirkiness they sold the brand on its name. Alas, in circles of people who cared about these things, GM and exclusivity are mutually - ahh - exclusive. The cars stopped selling.
There's a right way and a wrong way to capitalize on quirkiness, I think. Apple used to sell their products as the choice of the minority. Their "Think Different" campaign was not so much about suitability but about the mere fact of being different than the masses. That campaign might not have worked a few years later when nationalism and homogenized thinking was seen as patriotic, but it was perfect for the times.
So here was GM peddling SAAB as the choice of the oddball right during the time when it was gauche to be different. Then when that failed they started talking about SAAB's roots in a foreign military when US patriotism was near a peak. I suppose if they had survived, GM would have marketed it as the choice of banking executives. "Look! SAAB is the number one choice among failed banking executives!"
by GM they made beautiful and wonderful cars. After GM got their dirty gready little mints on the maker Saab cars started looking more like most american cars: UGLY!
You are obviously not much of an engineer.
Front-heavy front-wheel-drive cars had great traction in the snow. The reverse-engine placement made a reliable and compact power-plant. Nothing special about it, and I worked on them for years, models from the '70s through the '06. There were no special parts required for brake pad replacement, just a simple tool to rotate the piston which is quite common these days (see VW for instance.) This system has become more widely because of its superiority - the emergency brake uses disk brake pads and is integrated with the caliper, offering reliable and the best possible hand-brake.
Saab will be missed - engineering that was obviously superior, with other manufacturers later following suit with surprisingly similar designs. Such as the now-common front wheel drive arrangement Saab began using in 1948. How about cold-rolled steel body frames with crumple zones, heated seats, the hatchback, how about a standard-production turbo? - the list goes on and on. They may not have invented each one of those items but stuck with the good stuff throughout. I am driving a '93 9000 with >195k miles for a winter rat this year. That kind of mileage is not uncommon, in fact almost expected in a Saab. What companies can suggest that kind of longevity today?
It would be a shame to see a great engineering company fail.
Back before they developed the yuppie image and the high prices, they were just a nice solid car that was unstoppable in bad weather. Certainly they were more expensive than the typical car, but not so much so that they were unaffordable.
But GM really destroyed them by pushing them into a market that they were designed for.
We New Englanders still need a nice winter car, and Saab is not there for that purpose any more because they are just too darned expensive now. I only have one because I bought it used, there's no way I'm going to pay $40K for a car.
Saab was a modest company making a modest profit on a modest sales. GM came along and doubled their production and raised the prices. In the process they made the company much more fragile because now they had to maintain sales levels to pay down the expenses of expanding.
Really the story is not all that different from the typical failed high-tech company: crash and burn while attempting to grow out of the initial successful market. The projected sales increases don't happen. This failure pattern happens over and over again so many times, you'd think managers would learn.
A lesson to be learned and yet another reason for Europeans to be annoyed at Americans.
Nonetheless, you need not cry for Saab. It will live again. According to a news report just issued by the "Wall Street Journal", Spyker has made another offer to buy Saab. This time, we have the real deal.
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.
"My point was that it was NEVER great."
What does "great" mean? They were not high performance in the manner of Porsche. They were not high reliability like a Japanese car. They were not luxurious like a Rolls. That's not the point.
But they were "great" at their original design goal as stated: a good car in bad weather.
Even Sweden will let the free market actually do its job. Kinda ironic seeing how the neocons of other governments like to describe us.
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/12/19/report-swedish-government-to-meet-with-gm-officials-could-saa/
You were saying?
They take brands past their prime and run them into the ground
(damn, a computer analogy for a car story. A first for Slashdot?)
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Oh, come on....
The reverse-mounted engine made replacing a clutch in my '82 900 T something a neophyte could do. Yes, the Haynes manual suggested using a belt to hold the clutch pressure plate compressed, but that doesn't work - yes, you do need the two special tools SAAB made to compress the pressure plate fingers and then a spring-steel c-shaped ring expands to hold the fingers compressed... But, having borrowed the tools from the dealership for an hour - at no cost - I was able to complete the job with just a small set of metric sockets.
The brakes did need a "special tool" because the brake activator had a hydraulic cylinder with back-facing notches - it ratcheted forward as the pad wore down and had to be screwed back up to the new pad position. The face of the cylinder had two depressions in it and a flat wrench with two prongs was called for to screw in the cylinder. I made one with a flat, metal ruler and two pop-rivets. It took only a few minutes to create and worked until a jerk in a 3/4 tom pickup ran a redlight and hit me in the left-front quarter-panel - spinning my SAAB more than 360 degrees... the truck's bed came up and over and the truck that hit me wound up landing on its cab roof and skidding 45 yards upside down down a city street.
My 6 year-old son and I, both belted in, were completely unharmed.
I have one of the last SAAB 900 Turbos manufactured out of Trollhatten - with mostly SAAB parts - albeit that GM changed the window / cab profile. It is at 160k and doing very, very well today - averaging 32 mi/gal and just passed the CA emissions test (not too bad for a 14 year-old car that never seems to age). Compared to my twin-turbo Volvo S-80 '01 vintage (also with 160k) I've put far more money into repairing the Volvo than I ever did that SAAB.
Understeer can happen in any vehicle with even weight distribution (mid-engine) or front-heavy design. The famous Porsche 911 has massive understeer - big deal.
All that you do to deal with understeer is to accelerate and brake as you enter a curve forcing the front tires (drive & steering on the 900) down to greater road contact, then accelerate out of the turn. Easy and solid turning control with the tight and well crafted SAAB steering & brakes. Yes, you do need good tires - Pirelli, Yokohama & Michelin have been my go-to brands - with the Michelins winning the wear/performance battle.
Remember the 9-2X? It was a re-badged Subaru Impreza. Even by SAAB standards it was a flop. You can't keep a niche brand going with re-brands!
Saturn went out pretty much the same way, and that's why I traded my Saturn SL2 for a Subaru Impreza, rather than a Saturn ION. The Subaru has lots of unique things about it. Saturns became typical, boring, unreliable American cars.
Way to kill all the interesting brands, but keep Buick on life support.
Strongly concur, I refuse to work on these POS. The owners also tend to be pieces of work. Kudos to GM for doing us all a favor by buying the brand and putting it down. No offense to the workers in Trollheim. Peace?
All your database are belong to U.S.
There was always the rivalry going on between the saab two stroke guys and the VW beetle guys over which car had the best traction in the snow. So we had the great drive off until you can't get any further contest (we had a tractor to get the cars unstuck). We got the good blizzard needed, can't recall exactly but around knee deep. Lined up the VW and the 900 next to each other on the old country gravel road and off they went.
The air cooled rear engine VW kept going around one hundred yards further, albeit with not much in the way of practical steering, it rode up on the pan as it mushed the snow underneath, changing the angle, pushing the rear wheels down even harder. At least that is how we all analyzed what happened watching this "race".
Lawn, saber toothed badgers, etc, just my recollection of the real world results with snow traction and two popular alternative cars then for all of us woods hippies.
As to winter *heat* in the cabin, well, the saab won there of course. As to overall rough road combined mud, snow etc get from point A to B day to day practicality, the VeeDubbs took it for the rural hipsters, the saabs more for the townie boys who came out to visit.
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. They used to use that thing to drag logs out of the woods. It was the closest thing to a combined sedan/truck/tractor in functionality I have ever seen.
Is a decent car analogy.
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.
GM owns it (which was dumb in the first place), so let the Swiss buy it back from GM.
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.
Compare an american pizza with an italian one.
The best pizza I ever had was in Amsterdam, actually. The second best was in New York City. Italian pizza is, sad to say, largely unimpressive. It was, however still better than american pizza from a chain like Dominos.
A real hamburger with anything from any american restaurant.
I can direct you to no less than six unbelievable hamburgers within 20 miles of where I currently sit in the US, as can anyone else in a medium or large sized city here. What you won't get is directions to a chain restaurant like McDonald's or Burger King.
American beer?
I have to agree with you there. Beer here is terrible.
Coffee?
I can direct you to no less than a dozen good coffee places here where I live... What you won't get is directions to a chain coffee place like Starbucks.
Are you picking up on the pattern? There's nothing wrong with our pizza, hamburgers, or coffee. The trouble is that franchised chains that specialize in these products do not make good stuff.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
YES.
I live in Japan. I get so tired of people telling me that the food/beer/coffee in America is bad. I always follow up with "where did you eat?" The people who complain the most about the food, no shit, answer "McDonald's."
Really? The food at McDonald's in America is bad? Really? So, you mean, it's exactly the same as at McDonald's in Japan? Really? Why did you go to McDonald's????
Beer? Oh, you drank Budweiser and Coors. Well, that right there is why no one with more than a high school education touches that crap. Micros abound, especially in my home state of Colorado, and many of them are fantastic and award-winning.
Coffee? Did you go to Starbucks? You did, didn't you? Did you happen to notice that it tasted exactly the same as in Japan--burnt, bitter, and then dressed up with more sweetened milk than coffee in a futile attempt to hide the fact that they spend nothing on their beans? You did? Then why did you go there?
When I'm in the states, I love to grab foreigners and take them eating. It's not that food is bad in the US. We have some really phenomenal food--both at the high, hoity-toity end, as well as the hearty "food of the people" end (truck stops FTW!)--It's just that, as a foreigner, you go for what gets in your eye first, and that's going to be a chain. Chain food, no matter what country, is bad--or, at least, nowhere near as good as if you go to an independent place.
America has many problems, but lack of delicious food is not one of them. In fact, I've never been to a country that did not have delicious food, but usually you need a local to show you where to eat.