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*
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 was owned by an investment company called Investor. And they were just interested in cashing in money.
It seems like GM was mostly interested in technology and mot much in brand identity. The last decade of Saab has really went from something with at least some identity to something very average that can't compete with Toyota or other brands.
And since Saab was just another brand in the GM portfolio - and a small one - they weren't too keen on promoting it. Selling an Opel or Chevrolet would add more to the GM identity.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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 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
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!"
Neither of those criticisms applies to the cars that they make today.
Unfortunately for you, the quotes that I attacked were about how great Saab was back in the Eighties. My point was that it was NEVER great. So your criticism does not apply to my comment. The Saab autos of today are just like anyone else's, and they are not the leader in any class — they have always been mediocre autos at best. Why should they survive?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
The simple answer is, Americans drive. A lot more, than anyone else in the world. Whereas most Europeans can comfortably live without a car at all — relying on government-run public transportation (and when those are on strike — stay home) — most Americans need a car to get anywhere. So, in Europe a much higher share of drivers are enthusiasts — people, who like to drive. In the US everybody is a driver, even if they'd rather not be — and so there is a much bigger bias towards comfort over excitement.
Even for enthusiasts, if you spend 90 minutes in your car every day (45 minutes each way to work and home), for example, you'll value certain features, that you wouldn't care for, if you drove for 90 minutes a week.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That said, I still love my car, and I find it truly blissful to drive in any other occasion, but Americans really do have different driving habits and driving needs. For example, being an even six feet tall with size 12 feet (which is barely above average for American males), I am physically unable to cram legs into the well of the driver's seat of an Alfa Romeo Quadrifoglio. Cars of European sizes I am literally incapable of driving.