What would you do with 900 Saabs?
That is the golden question that will be answered this Wednesday. Ally Financial, GM’s past and future finance arm, seized nearly 900 vehicles on the ports of New Jersey and California once Saab Cars North America missed payments on their outstanding loans. Much in the way of litigious discussions were pursued in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, and now the final axe of Saab dispossessory will be swung with an online hammer through GM’s SmartAuction web site.
Can you buy one?
The short answer is not directly. You can contact a Saab dealer and see whether they may be willing to purchase a little piece of Swedish engineering. The good news is that bids will only start at 50% MSRP. The bad news is many dealers still have inventory, and those that do will likely have a conflicted interest in letting you bypass their current inventory for something far, far away.
One interesting trivial tidbit. Back in 2003 I used to visit a Manheim sale called Baltimore Washington Auto Exchange. At the sale they had one vehicle, a Saab 9000, that had no history. There was no title. No Carfax report. No Autocheck. No NICB record (National Insurance Crime Bureau.) No one claimed ownership. It just sat until the auction decided to use it for a variety of menial tasks that needed to be done inside their auction.
Saab is auctioning off several 9-4X models that will apparently have no title as well.
Will they become parts cars? I don’t think so. I can easily see these vehicles getting bonded titles in the very near future. Also, sometimes I see dealers drive vehicles that were sold in Mexico only, such as the VW Bora, that were made to another country’s regualtions instead of our own. I’ve seen a few Latino dealers drive them, but never sell them. Perhaps those Saabs will experience a similar fate?
Would it be worth it to buy a Saab at say… a 40% discount off of MSRP? But no warranty?
Sweden has the krona instead of the Euro as their currency. Still, if the Euro takes a dive in the next few years, Sweden’s largest trade partner is the EU. So it stands that if the Euro weakens, parts may get cheaper. Which could be a great outcome for Saab owners since their replacement parts are usually never cheap.
But then you have the issue of defects. No TSB’s. No parent organization to orchestrate the recalls for a latent defect. Not to mention the fact that Saab wasn’t exactly well-funded in its final months.
I sense many Daewoo moments in the future. How about you? To buy? Or not to buy?
In the year before Saab stopped claiming to still be alive, the advertised discount on Saabs here amounted to more than 30% in most cases. That was for cars that hadn’t sat out in harsh elements for many months and with the illusion of warranties and factory support. They still weren’t particularly attractive propositions. Paying $17k or more for one of these seems downright silly.
“The good news is that bids will only start at 50% MSRP.”
How is that “good news?”
The bids should start at $1.00 and be lucky if they come anywhere close to 40% of MSRP.
> The bids should start at $1.00 and be lucky if they come
> anywhere close to 40% of MSRP.
LOL. This is so ridiculous. What else do you want? That they pay you to take the car?
The only problem child may be the (1)new 9-5 which (2)sold in few numbers. Factors (1) and (2) combined suggest parts shortage.
All others Saabs have been there for decades in unchanged form. Parts are available as they always were. These are GM vehicles by the way, so lots of things are shared.
Missing warranty? Warranty is utterly overrated. Proof? Extending warranty for two additional years costs next to no money. And since car makers rarely loose on options, they expect, on average, to spend less than this “no money” amount on servicing a customer car. And we are talking extra years here, not the primary ones when the car is even more dependable.
Cars have gotten very reliable these days.
If you have a solid independent mech tech, I think you’ll be alright. (It’s not like they’re Chevy Cruzes.)
;-)
Would a bank finance them? If so, a 9-3 convertible with a stick oh yeah. Oh and tens of thousands off MSRP.
There’s something crazy/hilarious about this…
I assume one would have to pay cash for these cars because I’m sure no bank would want to fiance these.
I would not buy a car with a warranty and manufacturer support that had been sitting at a port for ages. The reason is salt mist. It gets in everything. Aluminum corrodes – even if powder coated or anodized – even stainless steel rusts unless you have the special marine alloy. All electrical connectors corrode, and it’s heck on electronics – circuit boards just crumble to dust. I’ve lived in the rust belt and near the ocean. Near the ocean is worse.
Shoulda named the company S.O.B
I’d like to see some one crazy enough to buy a few of these and cannibalize the parts to make one Uber-Saab, so to speak. Twin turbo engine, AWD Saab 9-5 wagon.
Because the old Audi allroad isn’t audacious, powerful and mechanically risky enough for you?
These cars are pretty much junk from sitting in salty air. Plus, the rubber parts are dry rotted.
Only a SAAB fanatic would bend over backwards to get one, just to say ‘I got one of the last…’.
At SAABs united site, some jumped for joy when the Chinese firm bought the remnants, assuming “a new full lineup is on the way”.
But smarter fans realized this new SAAB will be nothing like any of the old lines.
Wow, so much drama about the salty air at the port….. I imported a 1996 Celica from Japan last year….you know, the little island in the middle of the ocean. The car is over 15 years old and has no rust whatsoever. The underside of the car is spotless. Even the bolts holding the suspension components, etc, even look like brand new. Sure, the paint was in terrible shape, but nothing my orbital polisher couldn’t fix. I wouldn’t hestitate to buy a car that’s been sitting at the port for a few weeks or months. I would hestitate to buy a Saab though…
The difference between Japan, NASNI and New Jersey could be pretty significant in terms of electrolytes. I had more paint damage in one year at the shipyards in Philly then I ever saw during my tour at Miramar.
Uh – ever been to Japan? Didn’t think so. I’ve lived there – it has a land mass equivalent to California – it’s not all beach front real estate and it isn’t that little. It’s not Gilligan’s Islands.
I currently live 990 feet from the Atlantic Ocean. That’s two blocks away. I have corrosion problems. Friends who live on the ocean have magnitude of corrosion problems worse than I do.
Being a devil’s advocate. I locked up my Honda in long term storage on a Navy base. I returned it 6 months later and it fired right up and ran like a Honda. NAS North Island in San Diego.
I live in San Diego and I’ve lived in NYC. The two do not have similar climates. I also worked at a dealer that sold both new Hondas and new Saabs. The two had less in common than San Diego and New Jersey. Sometimes new Saabs that hadn’t been exposed to anything worse than a trip to buy lunch didn’t fire right up and run like a Honda.
How Honda supposed to run? Does it do some special way? Can Ford or Ferrari run like Honda?
“How about you? To buy?”
Unless I was somehow connected to the auto salvage or parts industry, that would be a big “no.” The lack of support from either an OEM or an active aftermarket would make ownership a losing proposition for most people. The minute that you require something proprietary, you’d be hosed.
I wouldn’t expect many commenters on this site to be willing to buy one of these Saabs or any other new car because based on their other comments there is absolutely nothing wrong with their 1996 Crapmaster DX that’s just about to turn over two trillion miles any day now and anyone who buys a new car or a late model car–heaven forbid they finance it–is crazy.
That being said 40% off may not be enough for one of these cars.
In looking at the list of available cars some of them are showing as being located at former Saab dealers as well as several auto auctions. How many miles are on those cars and what condition do you suppose they are in?
Hey man, it’s a Crapmaster GT.
“I wouldn’t expect many commenters on this site to be willing to buy one of these Saabs or any other new car because based on their other comments there is absolutely nothing wrong with their 1996 Crapmaster DX that’s just about to turn over two trillion miles any day now and anyone who buys a new car or a late model car–heaven forbid they finance it–is crazy.”
Best. Comment. Ever. :)
50% off isn’t enough. 75% might be. For $8-10k, I’d probably take a chance on one. Unless it’s a total lemon, you should easily get 50-75k miles out of it. Then just junk it when it stops.
Agreed, no more than $8-$10K and I’d also need the factory service info…..in English.
As for sitting in Port Elizabeth, that’s not such a bid deal. The port is not actually on the Atlantic, it’s in Newark Bay, which is brackish, not sea water. The cars will probably need new brake rotors, and maybe tires, and a good cleaning, but not much else.
Maybe Malcolm Bricklin will buy them. He started in the car business by buying a boatload of overstock Lambretta scooters:
“Malcolm Bricklin dropped out of college at the age of 19, his reasoning being that the time could be better spent. After all, he was determined to become a millionaire by the age of 25. He took over his father’s building supply business, beefed up its sales and sold it off, thereby pocketing nearly $1 million before his 25th birthday.
From there the self-proclaimed “business consultant” made contacts with the Innocenti Company, makers of Lambretta motorscooters. Several hundred of their ugly little scooters were languishing on a pier in New York and the fast-talking Bricklin convinced the NYC Police Department that their officers would be more mobile while patrolling Central Park. He parlayed that venture into a rental franchise scheme to recreation concessionaires.”
These final Saabs are a rebadged GM what, again?
Opels I think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_9-5#Second_generation_.282010.E2.80.932011.29
Epsilon II related to the current Buick LaCrosse, so trim pieces might be your real problem. Worse comes to worse drop the 3.6 and 6 speed auto from a LaCrosse in it. :)
If I had the cash I’d buy one for half off. w/ or w/o the corporation standing behind one or the government/insurance companies acknowledging a VIN.
Wouldn’t touch one for more than 25% of MRSP. As another poster said, the auction should start at $1 with no reserve. Otherwise, it’s just a hose job for GM dealers to sucker the unwashed into buying these orphans.
I wouldn’t take one for free, because I’d have to pay someone to take it off my hands someday.
Give them to the US Government, and save me some tax dollars for the other vehicles it might buy instead.
+1
Having all of the cars owned by the same institution would allow sufficient replacement parts by stashing a few aside as parts cars.
Let’s be a little realistic here. I drove Peugeots for YEARS after they pulled out of the country. They had a FAR smaller dealer network and parts supply than Saab, and the RWD cars were long out of production. It took 10 years or more for parts supply to be an issue. Even today, you do not have to “pay someone to take it off your hands”, a nice 505 is still worth something. The Saab parts organization is basically back up and running, and in the hands of the Swedish Government. It is just taking a while to get the US operation back up.
Now having said that, I too would not touch a 9-5 unless it was a lot less than 50% off. Way too modern and electronically controlled, with too many bits that are unique to the car, and just not enough of them on the ground for there to be any amount of expertise on the car. I would consider a cheap 9-3 though. Plenty of them around, and a much, much simpler proposition.
I’d do the 9-4x easily. Love that thing….
Me too, for the styling. The 9-4x is one of the nicest looking SUVs out there.
$10-12k MAX. $20k+ starts to put you in a reasonably priced mid sized.
You know what, I’d buy one. Down here 15-20K for a new 9-3 or 30-40K for a 9-5 might be good prices. And I’d do it just for the safety promise alone. They also sold the diesels here and some XWD versions making them somewhat tastier.
I have dealt with a car from an orphan brand before and is not the end of the world. And they’re backing them with a warranty.
I don’t get the fuss. Saab has been dead since the original models were cancelled after GM took it over. Everything after is rebadged _______ you name it. If someone wants a new Saab so bad, they should put the Saab badges on any used Cobalt, or Kia, or any other make of their choice.
Never before has a miniscule, failing auto company been talked about with so much angst, for so long.
This isn’t about Saab love. The question is: What is a new car, with no warranty, from a dead automaker worth? I’d buy one @ $8K-$10K because it would be a damn good deal, especially for a guy like me who can handle DIY repairs. I’ll consider any brand of car if it’s a good deal.
That’s all? What consequence that the automaker is dead? Used cars often have no warranty and quite a lot more mileage, but it sounds like you’re valuing these cars for much less. I don’t see the basis unless you’re assuming the unavailability of parts.
If you could acquire one cheap enough the warranty doesn’t matter as much. Sure everyone wants to get 300K out of their rides these days but if ten grand or so could get you five years/70K in style and comfort and then goes kaput have you really lost? Depreciation alone will run you that much on any similar car in the same period, the only difference being you paid triple and still have some residual value left over. As I said in my later post, the public probably won’t get their hands on these first it will be dealers and dealer cronies, who will use them up and enjoy them for a pittance, then pass them on in three to five years to the general public. Now those poor bastards I do feel sorry for, those who will have to fork out five to ten grand for these things when they will actually start needing maintenance.
When Saab still had a dealer network, replacement car keys from the dealer cost $1,000 to 2,000 to replace. IF the dealer could get a replacement.
There is an outfit in Utah that charges $595 for a key up to model year 2010.
They don’t touch 2011 + 12s.
Good luck to anyone who buys.
This is the main thing that kept me from buying an older Saab 9-3; the feat that I’d lose one of the keys.
I’d buy a new 9-3 for $10K, but only if I get three keys with it, or there’s a way to override the theft prevention system.
So when I got a replacement key made and programmed for $32 I must have been dreaming.
What a load of BS.
Only going by what I see on the internet. Or are those folks lying. Did you clone a key by having another key that worked?
> Only going by what I see on the internet. Or are those folks lying.
> Did you clone a key by having another key that worked?
That’s the point. If you have at least one working key, the cost is nominal. If all keys are lost, you must replace the whole system at the cost of over $1k. This is a security feature, similar to other manufacturers. Every SAAB owner who cares to listen is made aware of this and knows that if one key is lost, he needs to get a replacement right away.
Considering it has to compete against a myriad of used cars with a secure parts supply future, they should be happy to get anything above scrap value.
I know a few people that got suckered into buying orphan cars and within a few years the residual value was zero. So, they had a choice of taking a complete loss selling it or soldiering on with a car whose parts were scarcer than a Studebaker’s.
I don’t think many consumers would want to buy these. What makes most sense to me as the likely outcome is that they land in the hands of fleet companies, or livery service – the latter usually having a staff of mechanics to service the vehicles. Put them to good use.
I’d buy one if it was something like $10k, you could probably go several years without any real issues. Just look at it as a disposable lease that had some decent scrap value when you were done.
The high-tech, proprietary dealer nonsense (like chipped keys) will likely have some sort of aftermarket solution, it’s just holding out until that happens. My guess is some internet parts business will buy the SAAB dealer equipment in liquidation and be able to churn out the keys.
Yeah, it would be silly to pay more than a dollar or two for one of these cars. With no parts support and no parent company standing behind them, there is no way people could think of creative ingenious ways of keeping them running for a while. Look at Cuba for example, since the 1960 embargo, no American cars nor parts have been allowed into the country. We all know how that turned out, by 1970 there were hardly any of those old 50’s American cars still running because nobody in the country could figure out how to repair them. By 1980, every single vehicle in Cuba had crapped out and the population continues to this day to rely on either donkeys or crawling for their transportation needs.
Absolutely hilarious.
You win the unofficial ‘TTAC Comment Of The Week’ Award.
Please proceed to the nearest virtual podium and claim your prize.
Great post. All the best!
I’d post that Futurama “Can’t tell if serious or trolling (from a Saabanista)” meme pic here if I could…
The USA could begin to normalize relations with Cuba by giving them all of these cars. USA already owns the cars due to the bailout of GM and the Cubans know how to make brake fluid out of shampoo. Also keeps them out of the US market to compete for new car sales.
The difference is, cars of that era were about as complicated as a lawnmower.
Making a homemade gasket is one thing, programming a sophisticated, encrypted key is quite another. I doubt even Cuba’s military “intelligence” would be able to figure it out, much less some impoverished citizen just trying to get by.
Things like proprietary parts, lack of dealer/manufacturer support, crushing depreciation (assume zero resale value) and one thing I had never occured to me until I read it here at TTAC – Insurance costs – how much to insure a dead-end vehicle, for which repair parts are sure to be substantially more expensive given their scarcity ?
I think I’d rather have a popular car with a salvage title !
Insurance is unlikely to be an issue. It doesn’t matter how much the car costs to repair, what matters is what it is worth. They will be very, very easy cars to “total”. You get in a fender-bender and the insurance co writes you a check for book value, which will be not much.
Looking back to my Peugeot driving days (Peugeot pulled out of the US in ’92), in 1998 I bought a very, very nice ’92 505 wagon with 50K miles on it for $3500. At the time, a comparable Volvo wagon would have been $12K. This means that a accident that causes $5000 damage would total the Peugeot, but not the Volvo. The insurance company comes out way ahead on the Peugeot, they only have to pay out $3500!
Good point.
They will most likely become personal rides of car dealers, their wives, and auction personnel who can just plop a ‘Dealer’ or ‘Transporter’ plate on them and drive. After 50K or so miles they will hit Ebay and be snapped up by Saabinistas everywhere just like any other rare or classic ride.
I’ll take an almost new LaCrosse then. Dime a dozen down here in The Land of Waiting to Die
I bet there’s some indie Saab dealers that would be willing to obtain a post-bankruptcy ride (for a fee, i’m sure, but worth looking into).
Good luck getting a loan, however. This may be ‘straight cash, homie’…
> Would it be worth it to buy a Saab at say… a 40% discount off of MSRP? But no warranty?
No warranty has been an issue for all SAAB owners and buyers since the bankruptcy.
> great outcome for Saab owners since their replacement parts are usually never cheap.
I enjoy your articles, Mr. Lang, so please rest assured I say this with respect. Have you actually priced out any replacement parts for SAABs? I suggest you look at a popular SAAB part retailer like eeuroparts.com. I have owned several SAABs and have never felt that parts are especially expensive.
I would buy a 9-3 SportCombi (wagon) with a stick for 40% off MSRP (meaning, $18k.)
The 9-5 they can keep. Does not feel like a SAAB. I would not want to drive it even for free.
I have been a happy owner of a orphan brand (Isuzu) for the past 10+ years.
On the plus side parts availability has not been an issue at all, local part stores seems to have what I need even here in Alaska and if not there is always ebay.
The negative is no resale value (not that there would be much for any other 1995) and no dealer support on few occasions that I have needed a complex engine electrical problem diagnosed.
What would worry me with the Saab that this is a more complex car with more high tech feature than my old beater and also a relatively new models which limits aftermarket and salvage yard parts available.
Test drove the 9-3 car yesterday and I love it – BRAND NEW, no milage – out of the box.. The question is will I have an issue fixing this car when it needs it? I am looking into buying a warranty outside of the Saab Dealer package for around $2,200.00 and it covers 100K/5 year. The car is listing around 19,000.00. As I said it’s a 9-3, fully loaded. First Saab, so any feedback on price/warranty/car would be awesome. Thanks in advance. How much can I negotiate around this price.