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Automotive Industry
GOLFEN: Saab Story Comes To A Sorry End
Despite its innovative and sporty cars, Swedish marque became lost in the shuffle.
My old Saab 900 Turbo was a super-cool car but a maintenance nightmare. (Photo: Saab)
“So what’s today’s Saab story?”
That was the stupid running joke about my 1985 Saab 900 Turbo because of its notoriously high maintenance needs.
I bought my Saab used and had it for about six years. By the time I sold it, I felt that I knew intimately every nut, bolt and wire on that car. I’m a handy guy, so I was able to keep it running against all odds.
It killed off a battery every year, and neither I nor professional mechanics could figure out why. It blew its transmission at 60,000 miles. Parts were costly and sometimes hard to get, so some of my many repairs were by necessity jury rigged.
I loved that car, but I never bought another Saab. And that was what happened to many former Saab loyalists, or Saabophiles as they once called their quirky band.
After feeling burned by quality issues during the ’80s and ’90s, most of them abandoned the brand even after the cars’ reliability was amended by the ownership of General Motors. Not to mention being lured by competition from similarly priced BMWs, Audis and Volvos.
By the new millennium, sales went into the hopper and never came back, despite Saab’s cool and distinctive products.
So I felt deep sadness and regret when I learned that Saab will soon be another dead brand thrown on the giant trash heap of lost automakers. It would have been cool if Saab had been bought by a groovy supercar maker such as Koenigsegg or Spyker that would have enhanced the Swedish marque’s innovative tendencies.
But everybody knew that was a dicey proposition, and in the end it went the way that the pundits had forecast. Now the trolls of Trollhattan will have to go back to digging in the mines.
That was the stupid running joke about my 1985 Saab 900 Turbo because of its notoriously high maintenance needs.
I bought my Saab used and had it for about six years. By the time I sold it, I felt that I knew intimately every nut, bolt and wire on that car. I’m a handy guy, so I was able to keep it running against all odds.
It killed off a battery every year, and neither I nor professional mechanics could figure out why. It blew its transmission at 60,000 miles. Parts were costly and sometimes hard to get, so some of my many repairs were by necessity jury rigged.
I loved that car, but I never bought another Saab. And that was what happened to many former Saab loyalists, or Saabophiles as they once called their quirky band.
After feeling burned by quality issues during the ’80s and ’90s, most of them abandoned the brand even after the cars’ reliability was amended by the ownership of General Motors. Not to mention being lured by competition from similarly priced BMWs, Audis and Volvos.
By the new millennium, sales went into the hopper and never came back, despite Saab’s cool and distinctive products.
So I felt deep sadness and regret when I learned that Saab will soon be another dead brand thrown on the giant trash heap of lost automakers. It would have been cool if Saab had been bought by a groovy supercar maker such as Koenigsegg or Spyker that would have enhanced the Swedish marque’s innovative tendencies.
But everybody knew that was a dicey proposition, and in the end it went the way that the pundits had forecast. Now the trolls of Trollhattan will have to go back to digging in the mines.
2014 Chevrolet Corvette
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