Swadeology

Saab to feature in "Best of the Road" adventures

Best of the Road is an event being run by cartographers Rand McNally with the help of their official media partner, the newspaper USA Today.

The event involves five teams driving various Saab vehicles to 30 destinations around the US. The destinations are broken into five categories, with 6 cities in each category, as follows:

Most Beautiful – Baker City OR, Coral Gables FL, Franklin TN, Marco Island FL, Pacifica CA, Sandpoint ID
Most Patriotic – Clarksville TN, Emporia KS, Fort Leonard Wood MO, Peachtree City GA, Rapid City SD, Williamsburg VA
Most Fun – Glenwood Springs CO, Myrtle Beach SC, Santa Claus IN, Sioux City IA, Vacaville CA, Yellow Springs OH
Friendliest – Lake Havasu AZ, Mount Airy NC, Nacogdoches TX, Valdosta GA, Walla Walla WA, Woodward OK
Best for Food – Addison WV, Burnsville MN, Costa Mesa CA, Gulfport FL, Lafayette LA, Visalia CA

So what’s this all about? From the Best of the Road website:

What is the Best of the Road® 2011 Rally?

A. This summer, five teams of travelers will help us find the very best small towns in America in the Best of the Road® Rally. A panel of travel experts from Rand McNally and USA TODAY will select the top 5 small towns in each category – then the Road Rally begins!

Road Rally teams will leave New York City on June 23rd and visit each of the small town finalists. Each team will cover one of the five categories. At each town, the rally teams will dig deep and leave no stone unturned as they work to determine which small town is the best of their category.

When the rally teams arrive in Los Angeles, CA on July 15 they will announce which towns are really the best small towns in America.

The panel of travel experts from Rand McNally and USA TODAY will then determine which Road Rally team will win first place and the grand prize of ,000.

You’ll be able to support your favourite team by following their adventures on Facebook, their own websites, and on Twitter.

Captain and Clark (exploring the “Most Patriotic”) – website – Twitter
Gone with the Wynns (exploring the “Friendliest”) – website – Twitter
McNavigators (exploring the “Most Beautiful”) – website – Twitter
The Fun Finders (exploring the “Best for Food”)- website – Twitter
TravelingJules and TravelingJoan (exploring the “Most Fun”) – website – Twitter

We’ll be following the competitors and the adventures of the Saab range, too, as they carry the contestants around the United States on this adventure.

There are five teams, and of course there will be five Saabs involved in the adventures.

1 x Saab 9-4x SUV
2 x Saab 9-5 sedans
1 x Saab 9-3 SportSedan
1 x Saab 93 SportCombi

If they’re coming to your town, it’d be great to get and out, show them your support and let them know just how blessed they are to be doing this trip in a Saab. Maybe see if you can get photo of them and send it in.

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A personal reflection on recent news

I’m writing this from my living room in Hobart, Tasmania. I was meant to land at Gothenburg airport today on my return to Sweden, but I’m stuck here in Tasmania thanks to a cloud of ash from a volcano in Chile.

It was tough to read the latest press release from our parent company today, stating that wages would be delayed. After all that we’ve been through as a company, it feels like a real kick in the guts and I know the workforce must be doing it hard today.

It was tougher still to phone in to our team’s regular Thursday morning meeting and discuss the release, to hear the voices of my colleagues, for whom this news was still sinking in.

I’m due to head back to Sweden on my postponed ticket next week and I can’t wait to get back there. It feels horrible to be away from a workplace that I care about so much, to be away from a team that I care about so much, in such a time of distress.

It’s fair to say that working at Saab is a dream come true for me. I’ve been a huge fan of the company ever since I first drove one of their cars and I’ve been working my tail off for them for more than 6 years now (as an employee for the last few months). I’ve never come across another place with such a rich history, such a right philosophy and such genuinely smart, warm and caring people. It’s such a pleasure to be there every day and share a deeper insight of this company with its community.

The obituaries for Saab are already coming in from the various writers and tweeters, all trying to be more insightful and/or wittier than everyone else. I don’t blame them. I’d probably do the same in their position. I was urged by one person on Twitter to give it up, to let it go and admit that this is the end of things for Saab. I can (almost) understand where he’s coming from. There’s a lot of tiredness surrounding the fringes of this company right now.

My response, however – no chance. No chance at all.

There’s no covering over the darkness of the hour, but I keep telling people what a colleague told me last year: when you’ve got new, great product, there’s always a reason to keep on going. Right now, we’re in a very difficult position. But we’ve got heaps of great product on the verge of release and even better technology being worked on out in the back rooms.

For me, there’s absolutely no chance of giving up on this company. I can’t wait to get back to Sweden next week, rally with my colleagues and take up whatever fight we have to win.

Swedish Automobile Press release – 23 June 2011

Zeewolde, The Netherlands, 23 June 2011 – Swedish Automobile N.V. (Swedish Automobile, formerly Spyker Cars N.V.) announces that Saab Automobile AB (Saab Automobile) will be unable to pay the wages to employees as it has not yet obtained the necessary short-term funding. Swedish Automobile and Saab Automobile are in discussions with various parties to obtain short-term funding, including via the sale and lease-back of the real estate of Saab that was announced previously, and with their financiers in connection with current financing arrangements. These discussions are ongoing. There can however be no assurance that these discussions will be successful or that the necessary funding will be obtained.

Saab Automobile has ongoing negotiations with suppliers in reaching agreement on the terms of payments in order to resume an orderly inflow of parts and components.

Swedish Automobile will update the market of any new developments.

An update on Saab’s situation from the inside

I’ve had a few people in comments ask about the current situation at Saab Automobile. I’ve also read a bunch of reports that continue to cover our apparent demise in the finest detail. From a personal point of view, I store those away and look forward to the best revenge – seeing Saab live well.

It’s difficult to provide constant updates, but the company is doing the best it can to keep the general public informed as to what’s going on. We know that we have a lot of interested stakeholders who are hungry for information and we try to get them the information they need, but the situation is quite fluid and daily updates are not appropriate at this point in time because, as we’ve mentioned in previous releases, the situation changes from day to day, and sometimes from hour to hour within the day.

Nevertheless, here’s an attempt to bring you up to speed with some of what’s going on.

Our medium-long term outlook has recently been enhanced with the deal announced last week for a joint-venture between Saab, Youngman and PangDa for future manufacturing and distribution in China. We see huge potential in the Chinese market. In the short term, we see great interest already in our newest releases, the Saab 9-5 and Saab 9-4x and we have an excellent sales partner in PangDa to enable us to grow our presence in the Chinese market. In the long term, we see great possibilities in terms of wider distribution and new JV manufacturing possibilities to add to our existing manufacturing in Trollhattan, Sweden.

The proposed joint venture manufacturing deal would see Saab-branded and child-branded vehicles being built and sold locally in the Chinese market. Whilst we value all of our markets, the Chinese market is the obvious growth corridor for Saab into the future and this deal is key to that future growth. Whilst we leave no stone unturned in making sure we’re prepared for the approval process, we have every confidence that the deal will get through regulatory approval both in Sweden and in China. Youngman, despite it’s name, is a well established company with a near 60-year history in transportation and automotive manufacturing. Whilst they may not be the biggest vehicle producer in China, they’re very well connected and respected in the industry, which is why we had been speaking with them for a significant period of time prior to this deal.

Our achilles heel at the moment is not the long-term outlook, though we do not take that for granted. Our immediate challenge is cashflow; securing sufficient funds to get suppliers on board and the factory up and running again on a consistent basis.

These are all points mentioned previously in various statements from Saab, but they’re worth repeating again.

Saab has a significant order bank in place. Those orders represent a big boost to Saab’s inward cash flows, however we can’t invoice and receive payment for those cars until they’re built. We can’t invoice a 98% complete vehicle. You can call it a Saabish chicken-and-egg puzzle if you like – we have plenty of orders to complete (meaning inwards cashflow) if we can get parts, but parts have been difficult to get because of restricted cashflow. We are working hard with suppliers to resolve this.
Some people have mentioned that the PangDa funds should have been sufficient to get things running again on a stable footing. The PangDa purchase was indeed a significant one, however we still have to build and supply those vehicles to PangDa, which is what they paid their money for.
We hope to receive another instalment of EIB funding soon, however as many of you know, this is not a short term liquidity solution. EIB funding is for longer term investment in efficient technology. Whilst Saab are fortunate to do a lot of work in this area, we understand that the EIB take a longer term outlook, which is what we’re looking to put in place with deals such as the Youngman and PangDa deals.
Work continues to secure the PropCo sale and lease-back of Saab’s real estate, which would provide a significant boost to liquidity.

Saab has a brilliant product plan for the coming years, as well as great offerings for sale in the current range.

The Saab 9-4x is completely allocated for the 2011 model year and interest in the 2012 model year is already very strong.
We have the all new Saab 9-5 sedan in place and established in the market.
The Saab 9-3 Griffin sees a significant technology boost to the 9-3 range and is the best Saab 9-3 we’ve ever built.
The 9-3 TTiD range offers the most powerful and flexible sub-120g emissions package in the market. This is a key to sales in many European markets and interest has been very strong for this model.
The Saab 9-5 SportCombi, a key for the 9-5’s success in Europe, is about to come into production.

It’s the biggest and best model range that Saab has had in its 64-year automotive history. For those of you who are frustrated that you can’t take delivery of your car just yet, let me assure you that we’re just as frustrated that we haven’t been able to get it to you.

We’d like nothing more.

We will keep you updated as best we can, but no specific date can be promised at this stage for the continuation of production. The conditions that will enable that are still being negotiated with key suppliers around the world.

Events – IntSaab 2011, Finland

This event has been added to the events page.

IntSaab is the annual International Saab Clubs meet, which is hosted in a different country each year. Although it mentions Saab Clubs in the official title, you do not need to be a member of a Saab Club to attend. IntSaab is open to all.

Well, almost. IntSaab 2011 is fully booked, such is the popularity of the event. For those who are interested in attending an IntSaab meeting in future years, however, here’s a run-down of what will be happening this year……

IntSaab 2011 is being hosted by the Saab Club of Finland. The main center of events will be at the Hotel Ellivuori, in Sastamala. The official IntSaab program runs from August 5-8, 2011.

The program for this year’s event also includes a pre-tour from August 3 to 5, which will start at Espoo Car Museum near Helsinki and finish in Uusikaupunki with a visit to the SAAB Museum. Participants will then head for Ellivuori in time for the official IntSaab proceedings.

The official IntSaab program for 2011 is as follows…..

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Friday, Aug. 5 2011
Afternoon:
Arrival formalities and registration.
Arrival of the pre tour participants.

Evening:
Presentation: Hannu Berger, “History Of The Uusikaupunki Car Factory”
Presentation: Simo Lampinen, “Flying Finn”
Get together around the BBQ.

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Saturday, Aug. 6 2011
Morning:
Breakfast served at the hotel for all participants.
Registration continues.
An 80km long Saab pick nick tour with quizzes and tasks.
The picknick tour includes a pause at the Nokian Tyres warehouse, where a soup lunch and a factory tour will be availlable, as well as a show by Saab Performance Team.

Afternoon:
A non-prepaid lunch at Ellivuori will be served.
Parts sales.
Beauty contest.
Normal sauna and traditional Finnish smoke sauna.
Swimming pool and possibility to swim in the lake.

Evening:
Anniversary dinner with program.

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Sunday, Aug. 7 2011
Morning:
Breakfast at the hotel for all participants.
Part sales.

Afternoon:
Lunch with price giving continued from the previous night.
“Goodbye and get safely home!”

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I’m planning on being there in Finland for this years’ event and I can’t wait. It’s been a Saab event I’ve wanted to attend for a long time now.

I’ll be bringing you all the coverage I can. Hopefully it might inspire you to get to an IntSaab event one day, too. Saab gatherings like this one are always heaps of fun, with plenty of great people to meet and a smorgasboard of incredible Swedish (and Finnish!) machinery to drool over.

For those who like to do a lot of forward planning, IntSaab 2012 will be held at Spa, in Belgium.

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Saab 9-5 by Soundracer at the Gumball 3000

SoundRacer is a Swedish company that makes a fun little device that plugs into your car’s 12V outlet, tunes to your radio and sends a V8, V10 or V12 soundtrack through your speakers according to your vehicle’s engine revs.

The guy who runs Soundracer is Kenneth Palmestål. Kenneth is a Saab 9-5 owner and the company recently took part in the Gumball 3000 rally as a product sponsor. That means there was plenty of Saab 9-5 exposure in the heart of London at an event scrutinised by many, and that’s a good thing.

Thanks to Kenneth for sending through some images from the launch of the Gumball 3000.

Click to enlarge.

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Saab is not affiliated with SoundRacer, but we enjoyed those pics. There are Soundracer videos from the event on Youtube, too.

Saab’s Magnus Hansson – Rising Star

He’s probably going to kill me for writing this up publicly 🙂

I’m very, very pleased to pass on that Saab’s Director for the Nordic Region, Magnus Hansson, has received a Rising Star Award from Automotive News Europe.

Automotive News Europe is delighted to announced its first winners of the Rising Stars — a new annual award that honors mid- and upper-level managers who are likely to become CEOs or executive board members in the future. ANE will honor the 2011 Rising Stars, and their mentors, at a gala dinner in Cologne, Germany, June 29.

This is fantastic news. I don’t want to sound like I’m sucking up here, but back when I was writing about Saab independently, I had fantastic communications with Magnus and always thought that big things would come his way. Having the chance to work in the same building with the man has only confirmed this. He’s been a steady hand in Saab’s home market during a difficult period, much like a guy who used to walk the same corridors until recently, Jan-Ake Jonsson.

Congratulations, mate! Some well deserved recognition for you and your team.

Saab 9-5 SportCombi wows the crowd

Saab are in the midst of a challenging time. We have our fair share of critics in the world of business commentary, people who are paid to have opinions and duly express them.

Amidst all the doom and gloom, one of the main things that has kept me feeling very positive – as it did when Saab were being sold in 2009 – is the product portfolio. We’ve just got too much good product coming down the pipe for this company to do anything other than sustain and succeed. Aside from the dedication I see around the place every day, it’s the one thing that fuels me to “never, ever give up.”

One of those products that’ll be gracing the roads near you soon is the Saab 9-5 SportCombi. The following is actually an internal message shared between a couple of colleagues, but one guy who received it encouraged me to share it here. It’s actually pretty typical of a lot of the feedback we’ve been getting with our new releases in recent times.

It’s from Great Britain……

I helped out at the Three Counties Show in Malvern on Friday and also visited the site again on Saturday.

You would not believe the response to the 9-5 SW ……. It was amazing !!!!

I have done loads of Shows over the years and I have never witnessed anything like it! People were crawling all over it …Families …Couples …a wide and varied audience to be honest. A LOT of BMW owners……due to poor winter driving in them….Very Very keen……loved it.

It was a real buzz to see the reaction when people saw it and made a bee-line straight to it. Some even walked on to the Honda site next door and saw it on the plinth and climbed over the fencing …couldn’t wait to see it…loads of compliments on the styling build quality …. It was a real boost!.

THIS IS A WINNER!!!

Very encouraging indeed.

Coincidentally, I also found this video from WhatCar? today, where a group of their readers got to check out the Saab 9-5 SportCombi. The results are, once again, very encouraging.

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Have you seen the 9-5 SportCombi for yourself yet? And if so, what did you think?

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Video: Wind tunnel

Welcome to the third film in a series of “Inside Saab” videos – a 10-part mini-series on what goes on in various departments here at Saab Automobile.

When people think “wind tunnel” then generally think of aerodynamics. That’s not the case here. Saab’s wind tunnel isn’t an aero chamber, but a climate chamber which serves a very different function.

This video takes you inside Saab’s climate wind tunnel, where they can recreate a wide variety of climatic conditions for vehicle testing. There are solar lamps and heat exchangers in the tunnel that can vary the temperature from a hot desert sun to far northern winter conditions.

Saab do testing in these natural environments, of course, but having the climate wind tunnel allows you a lot of flexibility in doing repeatable testing on different parts. Many of you live in places where the weather can be quite variable from day to day. The climate wind tunnel eliminates this variation and vehicle testing engineers can be sure that the climate conditions are the same over and over again, for each test they perform.

Enjoy this peek into Saab’s climate wind tunnel.

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In case you missed the first two instalments, they are available at the following links:

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Inside Saab – Robot cars

I know what you’re thinking when you read that title….

You’re thinking this might be some sort of apocalyptic horror story where we aren’t allowed to drive anymore and robots from Sweden take over the driving, plugged into some evil worldwide network that monitors traffic, your speed, where you’ve been and so on and so forth. It sounds like Big Brother moving right into your garage.

Not so.

The story does involve robotics and driving, though, and it’s both fun to watch and incredible to experience first hand.

Klas Olsson and Carl Sandberg are engineering students from Chalmers University and what they’ve developed is a system whereby a car can be driven by a robotic steering unit according to pre-programmed parameters (circuit, speeds, etc). They were offered a chance to develop this closed-loop circuit system as part of their Masters Thesis project and in partnership with Saab. They did their work at the Chassis department, headed by Martin Öman, and were supervised by Dr. Matthijs Klomp, who is a development engineer in the vehicle dynamics simulation group at Saab.

Why and how?

This is the simple version. The details are something I can’t go into (even if I understood them fully) as they involve software and technical IP that belong to Klas, Carl and Saab. But here goes….

A lot of vehicle testing takes place where the car is driven around a circuit by real people. There are times when this is absolutely necessary. People with experience in such things need to ‘feel’ the car as it develops. In some instances, however, the testing process can be hampered by human error because humans are ‘variable’. That is, they won’t necessarily repeat the exact same action time after time after time.

If we can develop a machine to do some of these tests, you get the same circuit driven the same way every time and the vehicle data retrieved from such a test should be based on consistent inputs in every respect. More than that, steering robots are actually able to give more precise and more dramatic (i.e. faster) steering inputs that humans can, and they don’t get tired either.

The simple version of “How” involves a track modelled on GPS data and some sophisticated hardware being installed into the car to steer it according to this pre-programmed course. The hardware used to control the steering is a steering robot from Vehico and the work is done in cooperation with them. The steering robot is currently only able to perform so-called ‘open loop’ tests (steering as function of time) such as step-steer, sine-sweep steer, and sine-with-dwell steering, which are used for vehicle dynamics characterisation. The task for Klas and Carl, which even the experts say is very challenging one, was to create the control software necessary to control the steering such that the vehicle follows a pre-defined path using advanced GPS and motion sensors as input data.

I’ll let Klas and Carl explain more….. with a demonstration as well.

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So, aside from the challenge and the associated fun of building a robotic vehicle, why are Klas and Carl doing this and why are Saab happy to provide the tools?

There are four main benefits with this thesis work from Saab’s point of view:

Evaluation of the Vehico steering robot
‘Closed-loop’ path control (autonomous driving) enables Saab to perform more vehicle dynamics testing in Sweden, saving travel and transportation costs and test-track rental.
Since the closed-loop control is co-developed with Saab we will have full access to the work and will be able to use the developed algorithms for future research into autonomous driving for lane-keeping tasks, platooning an other future functions.
This is a very advanced vehicle dynamics control task attracting top students, which will enhance our mutual relationship with Chalmers.

The immediate benefit of autonomous driving is to enable vehicle dynamics characterisation testing as well as legal compliance testing that is not normally possible on relatively narrow surfaces such those that Saab have access to locally in Sweden.

One example of a vehicle dynamics surface normally used by Saab is the one at IDIADA in Spain, a facility that costs significant money to use and is in constant demand. If Saab can do the same work at lower cost and in their own time, all the better.

Dr. Matthijs Klomp summarizes:

“As mentioned, the problem of closed-loop path control is a very challenging one. This in particular since the control must be accurate and robust in a wide range of conditions, including and up to the handling limits of the vehicle. Additionally the controller must be easy to adapt to changes in the vehicle and the road surface (i.e. snow, gravel, asphalt).

Klas and Carl started to implement their control strategy in our simulation environment using IPG CarMaker, who also sponsored this project. Subsequently they moved to implement their controller in the real-time computer of the steering robot and to get it all working in the real-world.

The end-result is truly amazing, the vehicle both follows the path very well in both the linear and non-linear handling range without the steering becoming nervous or erratic, a common problem otherwise, yet is very simple to operate for the test driver. I congratulate Klas and Carl to a job well done!”

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