It’s overcast here in Skellefteå so I can’t show you the midnight sun, but here are the five-minutes-to-midnight clouds and ambient light, photographed just fifteen minutes ago as I sit here writing this from the Scandic Hotel here in town.
Our ride for this day-long drive of some 1,058km was a 2010 Saab 9-3 SportCombi rental from Avis, which got fuel economy of some 10.5 litres per 100km running at occasional overtaking speeds 🙂 on 85% ethanol.
And the reason I’m here? I’ll get to that later in the week but it’s 15% northern exposure and 85% helping a friend – a long and slightly sad tale that will finally get its happy ending tomorrow.
I can tell you this much: the Avis rental is staying here and we’re taking another Saab model from the same year back home.
I’ve done this before and I’ll probably do it again….
The first car I can remember is my grandfather’s brown mid-60’s Holden. It’s a little strange that that’s the first car I can remember because I would have travelled to my grandparents’ home – the only place I would have seen it – in my own parents’ car and yet I have no recollection whatsoever as to what they would have been driving at that time. I do remember Pa’s Holden, though.
The second car that I can remember clearest from my childhood is a Morris 1100 that was owned by my sister. She would have bought the 1100 when I was around 6 years old. It was white, had red vinyl seats and I used to ride in it everywhere because I never let my sister go anywhere without me (which must have been miserable for the guy who is now my brother-in-law 🙂 ). She called the car Bugalugs.
Despite this, I don’t come from a family of car-namers and I’ve never given one of my own cars a name, either. The only inanimate object that I’ve ever named is a bass guitar, which I called Veronica because of the big “V” at the top of the headstock. As far as I know, Bugalugs is the only car owned by our particular branch of the Wade family that’s ever had a name and I’m sure it was just a teenage phase and the novelty of a first car that made my sister do it.
Nevertheless, I’ve known other car-namers. A friend of mine owns a Saab 95 wagon in yellow that used to be known as “Sally Sunday” by its previous owner. And I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve heard calling their Saab by the name “Saabrina”.
A simple poll, then…..
Do you name your car? Or not? And because it’s so common, do you name your car Saabrina?
Other names and explanations can be posted to comments if you wish. I’m sure there are some entertaining stories out there about names given (and if the story’s a little too personal – nudge, nudge, wink, wink – please remember this is a family site and keep it to yourself. Thanks).
[poll id=”6″]
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Results will be published next weekend, along with a few of the comments if they’re deemed entertaining 🙂
An addendum to recent stories about the genesis of the Saab Convertible. This came in from Ed Iawanicki, a former employee of Saab in the USA back when the convertible was launched.
….I had to pick the car up from a photography studio in LA and drive it to Carson on a Sunday morning – this car was supposed to be secret and here I am driving down the 5 in a one-of-a-kind 900 convertible in a VERY cool color (that was never used in production) with the top down because at that point it wasn’t too clear if I put the top up that it would go back down. I was 21 years old and never so paranoid about my driving as I was that morning. Steven Rossi used to refer to it as “my girl Pearl”. 26 years later and I remember it like yesterday.
Speaking of Saab wagons, ABC News reports that the Saab 9-3 SportCombi has been noted by the IIHS in the United States as being one of the 15 safest SUV’s on the market there.
Personally speaking, I’m a little surprised by the SUV classification for that car, but we’ll take it.
It’s an early 1970’s Saab 99 fitted with a 16V turbo engine and making somewhere around 300hp.
I was meant to be at Kinnekulle today, too, for a Saab Turbo Club of Sweden event, but a time mixup saw me miss it. The photo was sent to me this morning by Peter S, the owner of Saab tuner Speedparts (his brother owns this 99 and Peter has a matching one in the same spec, but in red).
It’s 900+ kilometers north of where I’m sitting right now, but I’m heading up close to Umeå to help a friend pick up his Saab 9-5 (a long, sad story involving some ice and a telegraph pole).
The photo was taken towards the end of summer, 2010, oustide the service department of their dealership. That particular day, they had at least one example of each model 900 and 9-3 Convertible in for service.
I guess the only dilemma for the service staff would have been which one to jump into first!
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Thanks to Joey at Just Saab in Dayton for the pics!
An internal communique from Saab updating the situation with regards to recent disruptions at the plant since resumption of production.
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The halt in production in April and May did not just affect Saab, but also our suppliers. We expected the risk of disruptions while restarting production, and have indeed experienced such disruptions this week. Therefore, the company decided yesterday to temporarily suspend production until we can secure a more stable flow of material.
Yesterday, Management reviewed the forecasted conditions for next week. This is part of the routine enabling us to inform suppliers about the production plan. The review revealed that suspended production will be necessary during next week as well.
The dialogue with our suppliers continues with high priority. Meanwhile, representatives from Saab and Spyker are working on a variety of initiatives to further strengthen our financial position in the short and long term and to stabilize operations. We expect to be able to make an announcement soon.
The Production staff will be at home today, Friday. Thereafter, Production management will make continual operating decisions about required attendance at work. The staff will be kept informed by their supervisors.
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End of the internal communique. Time for a little bit of context……
We have two primary ways of getting cashflow into our business.
The first is via commercial financial arrangements, which we continue to work hard at in order to secure our financial base for the future.
The second is to produce, sell and invoice cars, which is what we are working to secure with our suppliers. We now have an order bank of some 10,000 vehicles between our plant in Trollhattan and our 9-4x manufacturing arrangements with GM at Ramos Arizpe. This order bank represents a substantial and prolonged cash inflow.
As was mentioned when production resumed, we expected that there would be disruptions along the way. There are hundreds of suppliers involved with the production side of our business, and hundreds more involved in other aspects of the business. Our recent prolonged stoppage affected them in numerous ways, and this has had consequences for the re-start of production here at Saab.
As we’ve mentioned in prior communications, we are working hard on both sides of this cashflow issue and will continue to do so until the situation is resolved.
Back in January 2010 there were a lot of gatherings around the world held in support of Saab as the company was threatened with closure by General Motors. The website that I used to run, Saabs United, was a central gathering point for the exchange of information about those convoys and it was a tremendous success.
I remember sitting at home watching the news flood my inbox as each of the convoys was held. You could almost track the movement of the sun by the email titles. I wasn’t surprised to see a huge gathering in Trollhattan, nor representation in Germany, France, the US and England. These were all markets I knew about.
What did surprise me, however, was the passion exhibited from Saab fans in Asia. The number of people and the incredible quality and condition of the vehicles they owned. I’ve talked to a few Saab tuning companies in my time and more than one has told me that their best and most fanatical customers are in Asia.
So it’s no surprise, then, that the following photo gallery from Hong Kong includes some fantastic Saabs. The event was held last weekend and I received the following review from Kenson Chan, part of the authorised dealer group in Hong Kong.
On June 5 (Sunday), the Saab Club HK gathered around 30 Saabs at a scenic place called Whitehead Club. Whitehead Club is just next to Sai Kung — the “Leisure Garden of Hong Kong” and has long been one of the most beautiful places in Hong Kong.
On that day, we were invited to join the gathering and we brought a new Saab 9-5 Aero and a 9-5 Vector to the venue. All members were happy to see the new Saab 9-5 and we also arranged test-drive session for them.
During the gathering, members showed their 900 Convertible and 9-3 Viggen to the media. Some members even tuned their cars on the day! At the end of the gathering, all members were given Saab Expression souvenir.
Sounds like a great club gathering and from the pictures, I think you’ll agree that Sai Kung is one of the most beautiful places in Hong Kong. What a setting!
My thanks to Kenson for the images and information, and congratulations to the Saab Club of Hong Kong on what looks like a wonderful outing.
File this under “Things that blow your mind about how incredibly complex it is to design and build a motor vehicle”. Long title, I know. But this is one of the more mind-blowing insights I’ve had into the vehicle development process since being here at Saab.
I’ve told people for some time now that there are no ‘fingersnap’ solutions when it comes to building/changing automobiles. It’s an incredibly complex process and whilst the evolution of electronics has given us many advances in vehicle functionality, behaviour and performance, the development work required to produce these advances is astounding. Add in the fact that everything you’re about to read has to be developed, tested and approved for all of Saab’s global markets, in all vehicle configurations, and you can get a sense of the complexity even before you start trying to calculate the permutations.
I’m going to apologise in advance for this one. There’s no way that I could adequately gather together everything I’ve learned about this process and express it in an educated manner. I feel embarrassed even trying, but I hope that you’ll still get a feel for what this is all about.
The Vertical Bench
There are two main test benches used in electrical integration. The first of these is known as the vertical bench.
The vertical bench looks like a cross between a dismembered car and a telephone switchboard. It’s based on a rack system that has all of the car’s components attached to it. Look closely in the photo above and you’ll see several different radios, climate control, rear-seat video screens, door handles, etc.
Here’s a quick look into how complex things are these days – the front door handles alone are involved in more than 10 different electrical systems within the Saab 9-5. And to think there was a time when all you did was unlock the vehicle with a mechanical key and step inside! Today, with passive entry, you do less work but the car does a lot of the work for you and that work is planned and tested here at electrical integration.
Zeewolde, The Netherlands, 9 June 2011 – Saab Automobile AB (Saab Automobile) today decided to temporarily suspend production at its production facility in Trollhättan. The seven-week production stop in April and May has not just affected Saab Automobile, but particularly also its supplier base. While Saab Automobile booked lots of progress and reached agreements with the vast majority of its supplier base, negotiations with a number of suppliers on payment and delivery terms are still ongoing. These negotiations are expected to be finalized shortly.
Saab Automobile is working on a number of initiatives to secure further short and medium-term funding.
As communicated in the press release of May 27th, Saab Automobile anticipated production hiccups in the start-up phase which Saab Automobile has in fact experienced in the last few days. In order to avoid disruptions as a result of irregular inflows of certain components and parts, Saab Automobile has decided to temporary suspend production and will resume production as soon as possible once it has secured a more stable inflow of components and parts together with its supplier base.
Victor Muller, Chairman and CEO of Saab Automobile, said: “We anticipated that we would not see a smooth inflow of supplies as from the day we restarted production, May 27th, and communicated that in our press release of that day. We have a few thousand suppliers worldwide with each of whom we have to reach acceptable terms and conditions to resume production of parts and subsequent deliveries. Many suppliers are located outside Europe and re-stocking inevitably takes time.
“Thus far we have reached agreements with the vast majority of our suppliers and we are confident that we will reach agreement with all remaining suppliers in the coming days, thereby stabilizing our operations and our production in particular. However, it is not to be excluded that we will see production hiccups in the near future until the supply chain is fully back to normal. I reiterate our appreciation for our suppliers who are working with us constructively to come to terms and put our production back on track. At this moment, we have almost 10,000 orders on hand, including those for the Saab 9-4X which is currently being built in Mexico.”
You’re currently at Inside Saab – the inside perspective on what’s going on from day to day here at Saab HQ in Trollhattan. I’m very humbled that you’ve taken the time to visit and I hope you enjoy your stay, tell all your friends and come back again.
But did you know that there are other official Saab channels out there and we’ve got various ways for you to keep in touch?
Saab.com
….because we’re a car company after all. Saab.com features the reason we’re in business, our outstanding cars. You can customise your own vehicles, spin them around for a 360-degree view and check out what else is happening around the company.
Saab Newsroom RSS feed
All of our corporate news in one place. If you want the official releases and none of the human interest stuff, the Saab Newsroom is the place to go. If you use an RSS reader, simply load the Newsroom RSS feed into your reader, hit ‘subscribe’ and you’ll have access to full posts that you can read when it suits you.
Again, if you use an RSS reader (and it doesn’t have auto-discovery), simply load the Inside Saab RSS feed into your reader, hit ‘subscribe’ and you’ll have access to full posts that you can read when it suits you.
Inside Saab on Twitter
I tweet throughout the day, sometimes a lot and sometimes not. You can use the Inside Saab twitter feed to stay informed about when new posts are made on the Inside Saab website. I also post links to recommended reading elsewhere and the odd occasional tidbit about what’s going on inside Saab in real time.
Saab on Facebook
Saab’s Facebook page has nearly 90,000 fans and there is always something going on there. You can send us images of your car, participate in competitions and get local and global Saab news posted to your wall, receiving it whenever you log in. There are also links to events, galleries, downloadable wallpapers and much, much more.
Saab on Youtube
The Saab Cars Official Youtube page has a large selection of video content for you to enjoy. We use this content here on Inside Saab as well as on Facebook, but you can also browse the channel yourself and enjoy a rich media insight into our vehicles and our company. We have separate playlists on Youtube, too, so you can pick the subject that interests you most and head there first.
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We’re constantly developing our online presence and you can expect to see more ways to interact with Saab soon.
