Saab gets back in gear with 9-5

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Saturday, June 19, 2010

I DOUBT very much if there will be a more important new car launched this year than the new Saab 9-5.

OK, so car companies will insist theirthat every new car that is unveiled is important in its own right, but the Swedish machine is important not just for Saab; it is important but for the Swedish nation as a whole, for the 5,000 employees of the company, for the European Investment Bank, and a for whole host of other reasons.

In many ways It is something of a minor — no, make that major — miracle that the 9-5 is with us at all; if fact it is a miracle Saab is with us still as well.

I’m sure you all know the story by now. Saab was owned by General Motors until fairly recently and when the American giant hit the wall financially, in 2009, it was decided that it needed to divested itself of various assets — Saab being one of them.

The immediately presented a problem for the historic Swedish company’s as its future was on the line and there seemed to be little future for it. Sure, there was interest, initially, from a variety of motor companies, but in the end it seemed destined to come under the ownership of Koenigsegg, the Swedish supercar maker.

Ultimately, that deal foundered, but in stepped Spyker, the Dutch boutique supercar maker and its mercurial owner, Victor Muller.

After weeks of nightmarish negotiations, a deal was done whereby Spyker took control of Saab, and, all of a sudden, the company had a future again.

And now, just over 100 days into the new regime, the newly invigorated company has launched its first new product — the new Saab 9-5.

Of course, the new car was pretty much done and dusted before Spyker took Saab over, but, even so, it represents a fresh start for the new company and Victor Muller, for one, is determined to make the most of it.

Speaking at the launch of the new machine, at the company’s primary manufacturing plant, at Trollhattan, near Gothenburg, last week, he said that the merger of the two companies could only have taken place in extraordinary circumstances — and that’s how it turned out.

Outlining the company’s plans, Muller and the man who actually runs the company, managing director, Jan-Åke Jonsson, said that they would see Saab as a viable entity only when it sold 125,000 units worldwide in a full year.

With the advent of the new 9-5, they have started the process whereby they are determined to return the company to that level of sales.

With a new 9-3 rolling out in 2012, there will be a 9-4X crossover next April, a 9-5 Estate by mid-2011, and a new model 9-1 at some stage in the future.

Muller and Jonsson reckon they do not have to market these new machines to new customers to achieve their targets, but simply have to get all their old customers back.

America and Britain are Saab’s two biggest markets outside Sweden, and the management believe there is enough brand loyalty out there for the company to re-establish itself.

Of course, they need to have the product to do so and they see the 9-5 as a very suitable first step in persuading customers that the reasons they once bought Saab cars down the years are still evident in the company’s products.
And, on the evidence of what I saw in Trollhattan last week, I think they are probably right.

The new car is a very substantial machine, indeed. Good looking and purposeful, it is also very good to drive and very impressive, when you consider that it will be going up against the might of such as Mercedes, Audi and BMW.

In fact, Saab say the Audi A6 is the main rival for their car, and their market research in the key American market shows that the people who buy Audi products — “affluent progressives” or upper class liberals, by definition — are exactly the same people who buy Saab. Mercedes buyers, incidentally, are labelled as upper class conservatives, while BMW buyers are social climbers, their research claims.

The two main sellers for Saab, when the car comes to Ireland in September, will be the 160 bhp 2.0 TiD version and the 190 bhp 2.0 TTiD model. There will also be a 2.8-litre V6, but they don’t expect to sell many.

These will come in three specification variants — Linear, Vector and Aero — and the price is expected to start from 36,500, at launch.

Aside from driving the car on normal Swedish roads, and given that Saab placed much emphasis on the amount of work it has done to hone the drive-train and suspensions of the new machine, to a point where serious drivers will be able to find top line quality on offer, in terms of the driving experience, it was hardly surprising that a lot of time was spent at the launch on the test track.

Here. The Saab engineers and test drivers showed us how they had fine-tuned the 9-5’s chassis to the point where it was a match for — if not the better of — most of its rivals.

It did impress, I have to say, and I was particularly taken by the commitment and enthusiasm of all the engineering and technical people involved in the project.

There is no doubting that new life has been breathed into Saab in a very short period of time, and you would genuinely like to see the endeavours of all involved being rewarded.

I hope their boldness and technical prowess pays dividends for them.
However, only time will tell.