Don't sob at the funeral for Saab.

[Mustangfan2003]

Should be able to find a Saab for cheap, if you can still find a dealer. 

[ifcar]

On the plus side, the sale prices of 9-3, 9-5 and the few 9-4xes probably will have tanked. And they'll likely appreciate greatly if Saab doesn't come back.

You mean over the course of 50 years, right? A new luxury car with no warranty isn't going to be worth less than a used luxury car with no warranty.

[2o6]

You mean over the course of 50 years, right? A new luxury car with no warranty isn't going to be worth less than a used luxury car with no warranty.

Probably over a shorter amount of time.

[CALL_911]

And they'll likely appreciate greatly if Saab doesn't come back.

You do mean depreciate, right?

[2o6]

You do mean depreciate, right?

It could go both ways?

[Galaxy]

Did any 94X make it to the public?

[2o6]

Did any 94X make it to the public?

I saw one on the road the other day, and there are a couple outside my local Saab dealer.

[Laconian]

LAME

[ifcar]

Probably over a shorter amount of time.

A car with a $45,000 sticker isn't going to go for much under $35,000, if at all. You think people are then going to want to pay even more for that?

[93JC]

In the short term the value of new Saabs will drop like a rock. Remember that parts shortages have been rampant over the last couple years because Saab was often late in paying suppliers. Some of the powertrain parts would be common with some GM cars, but all the body panels, the interior parts... those are all bespoke, and have been built intermittently in small numbers.

Chances are getting collision insurance for a Saab 9-5 or 9-4x would be astronomically expensive if not outright impossible. Who would insure such a vehicle? You'd total the thing in a fender-bender.

[Mustangfan2003]

So a conversation with a Saab owner can go like this

Owner "I totaled my car"

Friend "What happened?"

Owner "A shopping cart put a dent in the door." 

[MrH]

It'll be interesting to see how much the local inventory drops in price.

And yeah, 93JC is right.  Service parts on things like interior panels will be damn near impossible.

The 9-4 and new 9-5 will be a crazy rare car 50 years from now.

[Mustangfan2003]

I'm guessing this is the parent company of Saab, and their stock is trading at .07 Euros

http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SWAN.AS

[93JC]

Yep.

[Morris Minor]

My Dad had a 1990 Saab 9000 CD liftback. It was beautiful (retirement present to himself), with a fantastic leather and walnut interior. He loved it. It was woefully underpowered for its size & weight though, with a thirsty 2.3L four-banger that traced its heritage back to the Triumph Dolomite IIRC.

[Secret Chimp]

Meh. This has been coming ever since GM dumped them. I'm surprised they didn't go "well fuck it" the first time they didn't have the money to pay their own workers earlier this year.

[AutobahnSHO]

I ALMOST bought a black late 90s Saab instead of my current Subaru. But it just felt gutless, and the headliner was 100% hanging down, and I didn't want to deal with that. (Which also implied who knew what else was wrong with it...)

They were always goofy cars- I'm guessing they don't sell well in Europe, either??

[S204STi]

(save the 9-2x and 9-7x, which were Saab's ideas...).

9-2x was the best Saab of the 00s.  Maybe the 9-3 AeroX was slightly more interesting.

[Raza]

This discussion came up on my watch forum, and this is what I had to say:

"I'm definitely upset about it. One of my all time favorite, must-own cars is a Saab. The 9-3 Viggen. Although, I feel sore when any brand goes under; I wept for Pontiac (not literally) the same way I'll weep for Saab (again, not literally). Another casualty of horrific management and a bad economy. And yet, we are the victims of a shrinking and ever homogenized set of choices.

The entire landscape of cars is very depressing. We're looking and heavier and heavier and more automated cars, with integrated Facebook, and gimmicks for better gas mileage (duh, engineers, make the cars lighter and gas mileage will get better). Renault just announced that they're cutting about half of their lineup (which doesn't affect me personally, since I'm an American, but still), Pontiac is gone (an 80 year old marque!), and cars are uglier today than they ever have been. And more than that, they lack personality.

Even after round two of the GM buyout, Saabs managed to have a bit more character than their competitors. However, it didn't come without drawbacks; BMW prices for Volkswagen competitors, plasticky interiors (thanks to GM), et al. But, at the end of the day, the quirks will be missed by some, while thousands get into their Camrys and Accords to drive to work, oblivious to the tragedy we've all just witnessed."

So, was there good reason to keep Saab around?  Were the positively competitive and worth every penny?  No, not really.  But this should be a sad occasion for everyone who loves cars. 

[2o6]

I don't feel that modern Saabs (after 2002) were quirky at all.

[CJ]

The 9-5 remained quirky.

[2o6]

The 9-5 remained quirky.

That's just a kind way of saying it's old and uncompetitive.

[93JC]

plasticky interiors (thanks to GM)

Other than the 9-7x, what did GM have to do with the interior design of Saabs?

[Tave]

This discussion came up on my watch forum, and this is what I had to say:

"I'm definitely upset about it. One of my all time favorite, must-own cars is a Saab. The 9-3 Viggen. Although, I feel sore when any brand goes under; I wept for Pontiac (not literally) the same way I'll weep for Saab (again, not literally). Another casualty of horrific management and a bad economy. And yet, we are the victims of a shrinking and ever homogenized set of choices.

The entire landscape of cars is very depressing. We're looking and heavier and heavier and more automated cars, with integrated Facebook, and gimmicks for better gas mileage (duh, engineers, make the cars lighter and gas mileage will get better). Renault just announced that they're cutting about half of their lineup (which doesn't affect me personally, since I'm an American, but still), Pontiac is gone (an 80 year old marque!), and cars are uglier today than they ever have been. And more than that, they lack personality.

Even after round two of the GM buyout, Saabs managed to have a bit more character than their competitors. However, it didn't come without drawbacks; BMW prices for Volkswagen competitors, plasticky interiors (thanks to GM), et al. But, at the end of the day, the quirks will be missed by some, while thousands get into their Camrys and Accords to drive to work, oblivious to the tragedy we've all just witnessed."

So, was there good reason to keep Saab around?  Were the positively competitive and worth every penny?  No, not really.  But this should be a sad occasion for everyone who loves cars. 

I thought that was only for the UK.

[2o6]

Other than the 9-7x, what did GM have to do with the interior design of Saabs?

I dunno, I mrmembr he interior of the 9-3 I drove had some obvious GM parts bin switchgear all through the cabin.

[93JC]

True, but GM didn't mandate Saab use GM switchgear, and frankly I don't see what the problem with it was.


Again, Saab's problem was a complete lack of accountability.

[93JC]

Have a read: http://issuu.com/uoebusiness/docs/who_killed_saab_automobile_final_report_december_2?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage

Some interesting excerpts echoing my own views:

"We set out in this report to investigate who is—partially or fully—responsible for the death of Saab Automobile.

...

Many fingers will point at GM...

The real events that sealed Saab's fate, we argue, date much further back. As the world changed around it in the 1970s and 1980s, Saab's owners failed to see this, or if they did, failed to respond appropriately. By the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the game was not so much about saving Saab, as about disposing of it. GM must have seemed a plausible parent—after all, it was the largest car company in the world—but this bred 20 years of friction between integration and independence. While GM was pushing stodgy engineering onto Saab and not fully understanding the Saab brand, Saab was refusing to bow to GM's interference. The result was a company that failed to grow out of its niche, a niche that was itself under attack from strong competitors, particular Audi.

...

And while there will be a lot of speculation as to whether the Chinese investment could have made a difference, at the most fundamental level the problems that brought Saab to its knees date much further back; it was a missed opportunity for Saab to be for GM what Audi became for VW—a fully integrated brand with a clear, distinct premium image. And here both GM and Saab are to blame: GM for not understanding Saab, and Saab for resisting the integration with GM Europe, which in the long term destroyed its economic basis in a scale-driven automotive industry. However we also acknowledge that the particular attributes of the Saab brand made this a very tricky problem: to be economically viable Saab had to grow. But if it grew, it would undermine the inherent value of the Saab brand. Essentially Saab fell victim to its own contradictions."


Saab was a dead man walking 20 years ago. The only way for it to survive was to share parts and platforms with a bigger company to cut down development costs and to increase sales volume substantially. The margins on its products were too low for a relatively small brand. Survival required becoming bigger, but the Saab brand's ethos was all about being that over-used 'quirky' everyone talks about. 'Quirky' is low-volume. You can't do low-volume unless you're high-margin (like Porsche). But they couldn't go high-margin because Saab was always a 'practical' brand, an everyman's brand.

Like I said earlier they occupied a niche that didn't exist anymore. Almost every other brand that occupied that niche has gone upmarket (BMW, Audi) or gone out of business (arguably Oldsmobile and Mercury). Frankly I think the same problem plagues fellow Swedish brand Volvo. Volvo has lived longer because they more readily accepted being integrated with Ford and were bigger and in better financial shape than Saab in the first place. Still, Volvo is stuck in this no-man's-land between 'luxury' and 'mainstream'. To use a single company as an example, they're stuck somewhere between Audi and VW. They're priced like Audis but they're not substantially better than a VW. Saab had the exact same problem and it killed them.


I'm sure my staunch defence of GM in all this annoys the hell out of Saab fanboys ('Snaabs'?) but objectively I think it's obvious GM was in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation with Saab. To make Saab profitable required integrating it into the greater GM empire, but in doing so it eroded the 'quirkyness' of the brand. But if they didn't integrate Saab into the company then Saab wasn't worth keeping around and would have died a long time ago.

The authors of the report also touch on Ford's acquisition of Jaguar, noting that many customers complained that under Ford's stewardship Jaguar lost its 'Jaguariness', never mind the fact Ford spent billions on making Jaguars objectively better cars. Let's face it: post-independence, pre-Ford Jaguars are by and large pieces of shit.

[850CSi]

The entire landscape of cars is very depressing. We're looking and heavier and heavier and more automated cars, with integrated Facebook, and gimmicks for better gas mileage (duh, engineers, make the cars lighter and gas mileage will get better) ... and cars are uglier today than they ever have been. And more than that, they lack personality.

This basically captures the way I feel about cars now that I can't seem to explain to those around me.

[Cookie Monster]

This basically captures the way I feel about cars now that I can't seem to explain to those around me.

Same. It makes me especially sad when I think about what Honda was 10 years ago...

[AutobahnSHO]

Subaru?   

Seems to me all the Asian car companies have started out the same- making small cheap efficient cars with decent reliability. As they 'mature' they make bigger, more expensive vehicles, chasing more sales. So they become like all the others.

Datsun/Nissan.
Honda.
Toyota.
Hyundai.
Kia.

Subaru is even going "more mainstream" lately and plan to up their sales 20something percent by 2016.

In chasing sales, they all lose what made them popular to begin with. The Germans as well- the VW bug was successful because it was cheap and not Yugo quality. VW now doesn't sell much like that in the US..  SOMEHOW Nissan has several different niches..