| 777 | Date: Thursday, 28 Oct 2010, 19.22 | Message # 1 |
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| Saab has kicked off its new, post-GM era, looking to recapture its Scandinavian heritage -- along with the fanatically loyal fans who abandoned the brand as its products grew stale and its competitiveness foundered.
Dutch attorney and entrepreneur Victor Muller, founder of tiny sports-car maker Spyker, acquired Saab in a GM fire sale this year for just $74 million in the ultimate David-buys-Goliath scenario. And while Muller’s audacious rescue of Saab made for a great story, now comes the really hard part: reviving the moribund badge. Saab sold just 8,000 cars in the U.S. last year, down from a high of 49,000 in 2003. It didn’t help that for more than a year, not a single new Saab was unloaded at U.S. docks, as GM wound down the brand and looked to sell off whatever was left.
“It’s hard to make a Saab buyer go away,” the company's chairman told me yesterday at Monticello Motor Club, a private racetrack north of New York, where I drove Saab’s handsome new 9-5 sedan. But with huge millstones around Saab’s neck, including a scanty lineup and a 9-5 that hadn’t been redesigned for 13 years, GM-owned Saab managed the difficult task of sending those loyalists elsewhere -- and Muller doesn't need a detective to know where many went.
“Audi stole all our customers,” Muller said, citing the German brand as the one most often chosen by former Saab owners. Now Muller, along with Saab President and CEO Jan Ǻke Jonsson, plan to steal customers back with the widest-ranging lineup in Saab history. It includes the 9-5, followed next year by the 9-4X crossover, a new 9-3 in 2012, and probably a small 9-2 after that.
Muller likes to cite the 1.5 million Saabs currently on the road, and the 4.5 million people who once owned a Saab, as a large potential audience for another one -- but only if the brand can go toe-to-toe with the best from Audi, Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Infiniti, you name it.
The 9-5 itself looks refreshingly different from the typical, stalwart German luxury car. There's real road presence here, with a swept-back shape, elegant stance and an especially long rear overhang. The 9-5 is based on a stretched version of the GM chassis that supports Europe’s Opel Insignia and the Buick LaCrosse. A front-wheel-drive 9-5 will start at just over $38,000, in a version powered by a 2-liter turbo four engine that combines 220 horsepower with a class-best 34 mpg highway. Kicking the base price to more than $49,000, the Saab 9-5 Aero gets a slick Haldex all-wheel-drive system and a GM-based 2.8-liter turbo six with 300 horsepower. And while the 9-5 certainly brings less horsepower to the party than many rivals, every model is chockablock with safety, luxury and technology features, from an adaptive suspension system to a heads-up display.
All new Saabs, Muller says, will focus on technology, high mileage and “stunning design, with Saabness to their core.” To that end, Saab recently tapped Jason Castriota--a 36-year-old designer who formerly worked for Ferrari, Pininfarina and Stile Bertone--to lead its design efforts. After my test drive, at a dinner at Smorgas in New York’s West Village, Muller showed off a cell phone photo of Castriota’s design for the planned Saab 9-2. That small car’s classic Saab teardrop shape dazzled both Muller and Jonsson, and those two execs instantly chose Castriota’s design over a mock-up created by Saab’s in-house designers. And since Saab’s design board is made up of Muller, Jonsson and Castriota, it’s a safe bet you’ll see that design in showrooms in coming years. “Jason’s car was a little more unique, a little more daring,” Jonsson said.
Muller also dropped news that should warm the hearts of diesel fans: Saab will almost certainly offer a high-mileage diesel in the U.S. in coming years, likely in the 9-3 lineup, with about 180 horsepower and nearly 400 lb-ft of torque. And since Saab’s progressive, highly educated buyers are a natural fit for green cars, Saab is developing hybrid technology, and plans to put a test fleet of 100 small electric cars on the road, including in the U.S., by year's end.
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