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Christian von Koenigsegg speaks to Automotorsport Sweden about the future of his new acquisition. Managing Director Jan-Åke Jonsson’s interview can be found here.
8 Comments on “Saab’s New Masters Speak...”
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I hope they can pull it off. The Saabs before GM were awesome.
Seems like a nice guy. Best of luck to him.
I hope he’s right. Sweden has a huge and influential (for the size of the country) auto and motor industry, and with Volvo possibly becoming just some market targeted nameplate for a company from who knows where, perhaps Saab can maintain enough distinctiveness to satisfy their own little niche.
My advice would be to stick with longer travel suspensions, damn the aero at autobahn speeds. You’ll never match the Germans for autobahn missiles anyway, and most roads sufficiently traffic and cop free to go fast safely on in the rest of the world, are bumpy and rutty. More like the logging roads Swedish and Finnish rally drivers hone their skills on, than Autobahns.
Somewhat related, keep low beltlines and less raked windshields. Again, at sub missile speeds, who needs them, and they suck for glare and visibility. And hatches do rule, even more so when you have enough suspension travel and tire sidewalls to not cause the world’s biggest racket over every bump.
Keep refining front wheel drive, and spec large rolling diameter tires and good clearances. 4wd is quite likely a waning fad in our oil starved and CO2 obsessed world, and you became known as the “winter car” without it. If everyone else is going gaga over “crossovers”, there’s a market there. Approach it from the side of cars, not trucks.
I’m rooting for them. I knew GM would be the ruination of SAAB
Has everyone forgotten that Saab was broke when GM bought them? If the cars were so wonderful why didn’t they sell enough to stay in business?
History is going to repeat.
I wish them luck. I think the new 9-5 is great, and so do my parents… they have a 2007 9-5. Both have already said they would buy the new one in a couple of years when the miles are piled onto their current car.
Has everyone forgotten that Saab was broke when GM bought them? If the cars were so wonderful why didn’t they sell enough to stay in business?
This is a good point. Saabs were not reliable, well, ever. Perhaps by European standards (eg, next to Renault, Citroen, Lada, Skoda, Alfa Romeo and such) they weren’t totally excretable, but quality actually did improve under GM.
Where GM went wrong was junking anything that made Saab unique. Saab could have worked as a kind of oddball European Acura, selling premium, sporty, if weird, cars. Instead, GM tried to make them into a producer of bland mediocre BMW knockoffs. You can see the “jump the shark” moment with the 9-3SS: at the same time it failed to be a 3-Series competitor, it also alienated existing Saab buyers. The 9-2X and 9-7X didn’t help matters.
If Saab can be independent, it needs to provide both a reasonably reliable product and something that’s somehow different from what’s currently available. That will be so very hard.
@psarhjinian; I don’t think it would be hard to SAAB to come up with a new product that is different than what is out there. Selling that product at a price and volume to make up for the development costs, yes, that will be tricky.