The World Media Festival is an event held in Germany to honor excellence in corporate communications productions. It covers film, TV, web and print productions.
Here at Saab we’re very proud to acknowledge the Gold and Silver medals awarded for two of our communications films in association with our agency, Valentin and Byhr.
Saab was awarded a gold medal in the category ‘Advertising: Online’ for Introducing the new Saab 9-5:
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Saab also won a silver medal in the category ‘Corporate Communications: Press Conferences’ for Introducing the new Saab 9-4X.
One of the bigger Saab events on the North America calendar is the annual Carlisle Import and Kit Nationals. In Saab circles, it’s known as Saabs @ Carlisle and it was on again last weekend at the Carlisle Fairgrounds in Pennsylvania.
Organisers of the Saab effort were hoping to top the magic 300 mark this year. They fell agonisingly close, with around 275 Saabs in attendance, plus some cars from the Saab Heritage Collection in the US and dealer demo vehicles. Given the rate of growth and interest in the event, I’m sure they’ll get to the 300 mark next year, and I’d love to bring Inside Saab along to record the occasion.
All manner of Saabs drove to the event from 22 different states. A good friend of mine, Jim Coggenshall, was there and he sent me this report from the event:
Saab had at least twice as many cars as any other make a the Show. Audi, Volvo, BMW and Opel were all very well represented but less than half the number of Saabs. Other interesting groups included Simca, Lancia, Datsun, & Citroen but there were literally hundreds of other imports and kit cars (Ferrari, Lambo, GTR, etc).
The vast majority of the Saabs arrived (often in multi car convoys) in time for the Friday night BYO cook-out. A fair number of folks (including myself) camped right at the fair grounds. It was a great way to meet up with old friends and share a little late night revelry without having to worry about driving.
Saturday morning dawned as a beautiful day. A nice change for the North East US, which has had the most widespread wet spring anybody can remember. Sunscreen was in order. It was very easy to tell who forgot theirs on Sunday!
The Central Pennsylvania Saab Club had set up a 200 foot long tent as the central gathering spot. It not only was the area for provided meals, it also housed the Heritage Collection brough along by Saab Cars North America. What a stunning display. Chip Lamb of West of Sweden spent a fair bit of the day Saturday firing up nearly all the cars. On Sunday, at least three of them were taken out from under the tent for a few laps around the roads of the fair grounds. Nothing turned more heads or ears all weekend than when Chip took the two stroke Quantum racer for a slow but noisy joy ride around the entire fairgrounds.
All the Saab participants filled out People’s Choice ballots in at least 12 different classes. Nice plaques were awarded for 1,2,& 3 in each class. A pleasant surprise was the participation of the Saabaru folks with nearly a dozen cars (Saab 9-2x’s). I’m told the true Subaru folks don’t like them and they sometimes get sideways looks from the true Saab folks. But they love to drive their 9-2x’s and it was great to see some of their really well cared for cars.
The organizers also invited “friends of Saab” to participate, and they were represented by everything from a DeLorean to an old RWD Jeep somehow mated to a Saab B234 (I’m told it was seen doing wheelies).
After lunch at least three different groups went out for loosely organized cruises through the beautiful Pennsylvania farmland and up into the hills around Carlisle. Others visited the rows and rows of vendor tents to score some elusive parts for their cars or just some other memorabilia from the weekend. Then it was back to the fairgrounds for another good meal.
After dark the big transporter that brought much of the Heritage Collection was pulled up beside the huge tent. A big screen placed on the side of it for movie night which consisted of a selection of the best episodes of Top Gear. By midnight most people turned in (except, it seems, those around my tent).
On Sunday things were a bit quieter. Many of the other show participants seemed to focus only on Saturday, but not Saab. A good 75% of the cars were back for the showing of the colors. We arranged the cars by color instead of model and had another judging (what’s with only three white cars?). Those awards were presented during the lunch which closed out the three day weekend. A great time was had by all.
To some photos, then……
I should give the honor of the first image to Jim himself, as he rode to Carlisle (a 900-mile round trip) in his Saab Sonett III, which is no small feat for a tall man.
That last one’s an interesting one. I’ve had a couple of people include tales of getting woken up by “that darn orange Saab” in their emails about Carlisle this year.
If you’re wondering how such a sweet little car could do that to so many people, maybe this will give you an idea….. 🙂
I’ve written few times here about my own personal automotive situation. It’s an interesting conundrum for the devoted Saab fan living in Sweden – there are so many Saabs here that are hard to get elsewhere, and usually at pretty good prices, too. Which model to choose?
Adding to the dilemma is the fact that I absolutely hate not having a car. I bought my first ever car several months before my 18th birthday, the date when I was first eligible to sit my licence test. That little blue Holden Gemini (there, I admitted it) tortured me with daily invitations to see new, exotic places as it sat there in my driveway.
Surprisingly, I’ve grown somewhat accustomed to catching the bus to work in the morning, though missing the bus by a minute (which happened today) exposes the frustrations of public transportation. Not having a car also means that you can’t get to the bigger supermarkets outside of the city, you can’t get down to Ikea to pick up the one or two things that you need for your flat, and you can’t easily get around to visit friends in the area (which is even more important when you’re new in town).
My budget is 30,000 SEK, around A$5K and whilst there’s a fair bit on offer – I can theoretically pick up anything from a 9-5 SportCombi down depending on age – there’s only a few cars that are rare enough to pop up on my radar, which I think I’ve covered adequately in previous posts.
The one criterion of particular importance for me is to get something that’s a bit more difficult to get elsewhere, especially back home in Australia. As much as I love our Saab 9000 back at home, I’m not going to pick one of those up as my main personal car here (maybe I’ll reconsider that in winter). It’s got to be something that I’d find difficult, if not impossible, to access back at home. It doesn’t have to be a car that was never sold back home – I’m not looking for a 600, for example, as cool as it might be – but it should be an edition that was particular to Sweden, or one that is hard to get unless you’re here.
My first try was with a 1971 Saab 99. The silver-bumper models with the Triumph engines are very rare back at home. I spotted one for sale a few weeks ago and even structured some international travel around having the ability to go and inspect it. Sadly, it didn’t work out. There were some concerns about a leaking gasket and more importantly, concerns about the ability to fix it without stripping the head bolts.
It looked just like this one…..
I was devastated. I really loved that car and it looked even better in person that what it did in the photos – inside and out. It even had the seal of approval from Mrs Swade, who considered it “a cutie” and appreciated the fact that it would be more difficult for me to drive too fast in such a vehicle.
Last week I had a close encounter with one of my other most-wanted dream Saabs – an Acacia Green Saab 99 Turbo. It would have been a miracle had a purchase come about in this instance, but it was worth a try.
The car wasn’t actually up for sale. I just noticed it one day on the way to work and left a note on the windscreen the next day. To my surprise, the owner contacted me and we met the next day to take a look over the car and check out just how interested we both were in a deal. I was very interested, but it seems 99Turbos really are attracting a premium here in Sweden now and I didn’t have enough funds in the budget.
This is not the car, but it looks the same…
That was particularly disappointing for me as a 99 Turbo really was a priority on my list. I could spend more time and accumulate some more money, but there are other unique options for less and getting the 99T suddenly seems like a matter that would confer responsibilities that I’m not sure I could meet in terms of preservation, housing, etc.
A new option has popped up. I’ll be looking at it this Sunday, all going well. It’s turbocharged, it looks pretty darn good and best of all, the owner seems like an absolute Saab nut. He’s only selling it because he’s just bought a Saab 900 Aero with only 30,000km on the clock and needs to make room for it. It’s a limited edition and it’s well kitted out, even if the performance is a little less than what I usually go for.
Will I get it?
That, of course, depends on the condition of the car when I see it on the weekend. It seems to tick almost all of the boxes, though. From the description and photos that I’ve seen, it seems to be a very likely candidate. All I can do is cross my fingers, inspect the car and see what it’s like. Hopefully I’ll be in a position to share some photos with you on Sunday evening!
It’s always interesting to see what sort of Saab-related oddities are out there in the world.
Last week it was the SaabViper making big waves on the internet – a Saab 9-3 SportCombi with a Dodge Viper engine.
This week, it’s something quite different……
It seems this Jeep CJ5 is the latest Saab mashup to get noticed. The car appeared at the Carlisle Import and Kit Nationals event staged last weekend in Pennsylvania. It’s a big gathering of vehicles from all around the United States and Saab always has a massive presence there.
Visitors to this year’s Carlisle show might have been a bit puzzled when they saw the Jeep parked amongst all the Swedish metal. All was made clear, though, when they looked under the hood.
From a little reading around the web, it seems the owner of the vehicle had a Jeep with no working engine, and a Saab engine laying around without a body. Why not bring them together?
The engine is a 2.3turbo and the Jeep is rear-wheel-drive.
The Saab 9-3 ePower Concept was first introduced at the Paris Motor Show in September 2010. Now, a fleet of vehicles based on that concept is under construction at Saab’s factory in Trollhattan.
Off to the side of Saab’s main production line is a room called Frickeboa, which is a multi-purpose facility that we’ll learn a bit more about in future entries on this site. Think of it as a combination of a prototype production line and training facility.
Right now, Frickeboa is being used to hand build Saab’s test fleet of zero emissions vehicles. The particular vehicles you can see in this article are intended to be used for validation testing inside the company. The final fleet vehicles will go out later this year and be used extensively by a select group of drivers, with feedback from the process being used to further improve the technology.
The Saab 9-3 ePower, the basis for these test vehicles, uses a lithium-ion battery pack and a new, advanced battery management system to deliver 200 kilometers of zero-emissions driving with the convenience of a full sized family wagon.
The Saab ePower is the first electric vehicle from Saab and is a result of a co-operation between Saab Automobile, Boston Power (batteries), Electroengine in Sweden AB (battery management system), Innovatum (project management), Power Circle (Sweden’s electric power industry trade organization) and the Swedish Energy Agency (partial financing).
Here’s a look at what’s happening on the build right now…
Saab 9-3 SportCombi bodies awaiting their fit-out as zero emissions electric vehicles.
Parts awaiting fitment are stored off to the side of the Frickeboa production line. Each crate has a label denoting an individual ZE vehicle from the production run.
A couple of vehicles on the line…… think of Frickeboa as a smaller, but fully functional version, of the main production line.
And a closer view of the same vehicle…..
A view of the battery case inside the vehicle. It goes down the middle of the car, allowing for optimal weight distribution and forms a divider between the two rear seats.
And a view from the rear of the car….
The cars take almost two weeks to build by hand at Frickeboa and come out as complete vehicles, just like off the real line.
The Saab 9-3 ePower transmission gearshift in detail…..
A look at the battery pack in a mostly-finished interior…..
Saab are celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Saab Convertible this year. Today we take a peek into to the development of this model, one that was so unexpected from a Swedish company.
The guy generally credited with the birth of the Saab Convertible is Bob Sinclair. ‘Uncle Bob’ joined Saab in 1958 and later in his career – after a stint at Volvo Cars USA – he was the head of Saab in the US when the convertible was developed. Bob is one of the most revered figures in Saab’s history, presiding over 60 continuous months of sales growth during the 1980s and remembered for his straight talking, have-fun way of getting things done. Bob passed away in May 2009 and his passing left a huge legacy for people who care about Saab and their prosperity.
I was very fortunate to spend some time with Bob at his home in Santa Barbara back in January 2008, on my way to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. A few months later, we recorded an interview on Skype and during that interview, Bob gave his recollection of the development of the Saab Convertible.
Following is a transcript of that segment of the conversation (from 14:20 in the film, below). The full interview is available via video, below the transcript.
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SW: I guess people like to hear the convertible story….
Bob: Hmm. Where to start on that one?
The US market was rocking and rolling by about 1983 or so. Saab was having some difficulty in what you might call the ‘lower discretionary income markets’. The Scandinavian markets, the Netherlands – countries that had difficult economies. The pressure from the European markets was to come out with a lower priced car, whereas I was pushing Saab upmarket, adding more content etc – they were two diametrically opposed directions when it comes to product development.
I was called over to Sweden with my sales manager and my marketing manager. We met with all of our colleagues from different markets around Europe and we were shown a 2-door sedan that had been stripped – it had no equipment whatsoever. It had stamped steel wheels, it didn’t have tinted glass, it didn’t have anything. It had wind-up windows, no central locking, no sound system…. and each market was asked how many of these they wanted.
The lowest discretionary income markets thought it was wonderful, the middle markets were in the middle and I thought it was an anathema. I said I didn’t want any at all.
Last week I posted a poll on to this site, asking you which classic Saab you’d like to buy today if you could flick a switch and have Saab produce it new from the factory.
800+ votes later, the result is clearly ambiguous. That’s mostly my fault, because I included two versions of what is essentially the same car in the poll – the first of the Saab 900 16v cars (with the flat nose) and the later Saab 900 SPG.
Here are the raw results of the poll….
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As you can see, the raw results indicate first place for to the classic Saab 99 Turbo.
If you look at second and third place however, the Saab 900 T16S and SPG both had strong support and I that compels me to name the Saab 900 classic versions as the poll winner.
As much as I like the 99T and would love to flick the switch on that one myself, the results are difficult to ignore (even if it’s quite debatable as to whether it should be a slant-nose or flat-nose model that should be revisited according to the popular vote).
So, 900-lovers, if we ever find that magic switch, you can rest assured that I’ll be providing these poll results as evidence as to what we should do with it.
As my old mate ‘Eggs’ is fond of saying – Vive la 900!
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And for what it’s worth, my vote went to the 99T and my preference out of the two winners would be for the flat-nosed, early 900 T16S.
That’s a Saab 9-3 SportCombi body fitted to the chassis of a Dodge Viper. Of course, it was just one photo amongst many and didn’t grab too much attention.
It seems someone has passed the story of this radical project around, however. It was picked up by Jalopnik early in the week and has spread like wildfire around the internet since then. Those of you with Swedish reading skills (or Google Translate) can also read the Saab 9-3 / Viper V10 build thread.
I’ve recently met one of the guys involved in the project and am hoping to see more of this vehicle’s development in the near future. I know it’s not a “Saab Saab” but there’s something very alluring about the whole thing, isn’t there?
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Whilst we might be indifferent towards the song, this Saab video mashup was most enjoyable.
Kudos to Saablime (and ps…. he’s also done a really cool 99Turbo video that fans of the model will love, too)
Saab has been analysed by just about every analyst on the planet in the last few months. It was nice to see the company respond with a well-reasoned and inspiring piece of writing.
Those without Swedish skills will need to copy and paste the text into an online translator.
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I linked to Jalopnik earlier in this entry. Here’s another one.
He single-handedly explains why many road tests are irrelevant, as well as making up a new saying – “As comfy as a Swede riding shotgun” – based on his experience in a Saab.
I’ve always loved his work. This is a good example as to why.
Our first entry in this series comes from Eelko B, in Holland, who has a stunning 1993 Saab 9-3 Convertible Turbo S which, as you’ll see below, is a true 4-seasons 4-seater.
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I bought the Saab almost 2 years ago now, in exchange for my 1993 900 TSR. I am the third owner. The man I bought it from had bought it from his father.
It is from May 1993 and was originally a light pressure turbo. It was a special in Belgium in the colour Aubergine Mica and had a full wooden interior, including on the center console.
The former owner converted the car into an full pressure turbo with some extra boost and gave it brakes from a Saab 9000. This was all done by the Dutch Saab-guru Peter Haaima. It drives spectacularly smooth with plenty of power. It also has a 3″JT exhaust, which gives the car a beautiful sound.
Why does the Saab Convertible have so much appeal for me?
Firstly, the 900 Classic is an iconic car with a beautiful design and of course it’s Turbo technic. It is remarkably reliable, it is well thought out (key, handbrake, etc) and it is known for its safety features. Add to all this the fact that is a convertible and you have the most sexy, reliable, safe, fast and distinguished car ever!
It is also very practical, since it is a full 4-seater with a huge trunk and its thick, all weather roof, so I drive it the whole year round as my daily drive. Anytime it’s 6 degrees or more (and dry) I put down the roof, turn on the heater and drive like a king!
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If you’d like to share your love for the Saab Convertible, please feel free to contact me and I’ll get in touch shortly.
My thanks to Eelko for kicking this series off in fine style.
Trollhättan, Sweden: The Mille Miglia is one of the highlights of the year for any car enthusiast. Fantastic cars, fantastic scenery and fantastic people. And at Saab Automobile, we live cars, so naturally we again competed in this year’s event after the 2010 edition saw Saab Automobile CEO and Chairman Victor Muller and former Saab Automobile CEO Jan Åke Jonsson taking the wheel of two Saab 93s.
For the 2011 edition, Saab brought three 93s to the Brescia starting line. The #331 car was driven by Mats Fägerhag, Saab Automobile’s Vice President Vehicle Product Development, with Peter Bäckström, Manager of the Saab Car Museum, sitting alongside. The #332 car was driven by Hans Hugenholtz, Chairman of Saab Automobile owner Spyker Cars N.V., and his wife Laurence. A third #333 car was entered and driven by long-time Belgian Saab importer Jacques Beherman, assisted by Umberto Stefani, External Affairs Director for Saab Belgium.
In preparing the Saab 93s for the event, the cars were kept as close as possible to the specification of the cars that competed in the old days. “We restored them to original condition, as near as possible, with the same materials and components that were used at that time,” says Peter Bäckström. “We’ve had to refurbish some of the interior trim and that was an interesting project for our colleagues in the prototype workshop at the factory. They were working with materials and build techniques that are no longer used, but they enjoyed the challenge.”
Keeping the cars in original condition also meant not improving them beyond their original trim. “For instance, with the technical knowledge we have these days, it would be quite easy to get some more power from the two-stroke engines, but that is not what we wanted to do,” says Bäckström. “In standard trim they produced about 33 hp and for competition use this was raised to about 50 hp. And that is what we had on the Mille Miglia.”
