REVIEW SAAB 9-5:Can the new Saab 9-5 mount a credible challenge in the executive segment? PADDY COMYN travelled to Sweden to find out
YOU HAVE to love eccentric millionaires. And Victor Muller is certainly one of those. When this giant Dutchman is not racing his old Ferrari in the Mille Miglia, an event he has entered more than 20 times now, he is building his own form of wacky supercar called the Spyker and probably most importantly, saving Swedish car brands from extinction.
“General Motors had to go through some tough restructuring, and before they could take money from the US taxpayers, they had to offload some of their brands. This meant the end of Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer and they also wanted to sell Saab too,” says Muller.
“We were interested, but we were also trying to buy the Brawn GP team at the time. When that deal fell through we came back in again.” Following an e-mail to Bob Lutz and painful wrangling with lawyers, Muller eventually agreed a deal with GM for Saab, but it was not without its problems. “There were more leaks in this case than in the men’s room at Oktoberfest.”
But a deal was done in the end, saving thousands of jobs and restoring production at the Trollhatten plant, which had turned into a ghost town.
The Saab 9-5 had been fully developed in the GM era, but had looked like it would fall by the wayside. But it too was saved and Saab hopes to bring back Saab customers to the brand that they had been deserting. Saab chief executive Jan Ake Jonsson, speaking at the launch, says that it will take time for production to return to normal after the period of uncertainty, “Saab had been in liquidation. We had no materials and nothing to build. There was a seven-week period where there was no production.”
Saab’s 9-5 comes to Ireland this September and it hopes to draw customers who might be a little jaded with the Mercedes-Benz E-Class or BMW 5-Series, but Saab themselves see the Audi A6 as their key competition. With the previous model having outstayed its welcome somewhat, in production for 13 years, this new one is always going to feel hugely different.
For a start it is much bigger, with generous headroom in front and rear – although taller passengers will feel the slightly tapered roofline in the back.
The design is reasonably simple and restrained, albeit with some slightly flash jewellery in the shape of those chrome light surrounds and the LED rear lights. Whether this looks funky or makes it look like the car crashed into a branch of Halfords is debatable, but there certainly seems to be more of an effort to work from the Saab Aero X design palette of a few years ago. Inside, the cabin is plain, uncluttered and still has some of the best seats in the business.
There is a choice of petrol and diesel engines, with 220hp 2.0T and 250hp 2.8 V6. Next year there will also be a 180hp 1.6T petrol model which is likely to be very much in the minority when it comes to Irish sales.
The majority will be from the 2.0-litre TiD with 160hp (139g/km) and the 2.0-litre TTiD with 190hp (159g/km). These will come with a choice of Linear and Vector in the TiD and Linear, Vector and Aero in the TTiD. In Ireland, Linear spec appears to be a degraded version of the Vector, which is the base model in the UK, so in Linear you give up Bluetooth, parking assist, electric seats and leather upholstery to save €3,000.
What this will do to the residuals at a later stage might prove to be false economy. Perhaps it was also a way of Saab’s distributors from directing the 9-5 away from a direct comparison with the BMW 520d SE and Mercedes-Benz E200 CDi, which can now both be had for just over €40,000.
We drove two diesel models, both with a slightly softer set-up than we will get in Ireland and we can be glad of that, because the softer set up made the 9-5 pitch and wallow like a drunken hippo.
We did try a model with a sports set-up and it was infinitely better and if you choose the DriveSense option, you can get adaptive dampers, much like those found in the Opel Insignia, with Comfort and Sport settings, or an Intelligent setting which does the thinking for you. You can also have all-wheel drive and an eLSD differential if your cheque book allows it. This is a car that feels more at home being comfy and cosey though and it is good at that.
The difficulty with the 9-5 is that we are not really sure what it is. It has been presented as a new Saab, yet we know that it comes from a time when Saab was something GM didn’t really know what to do with. It feels like an Opel in many ways, yet there is enough “Saabness” in it to point to a bright future.
This will make a good alternative choice for those who are now bored rigid with BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz, but then again, that is only if you find utter competence and good residual values dull.
We definitely will see better from Saab in the future, there is no doubt of that, but for now this 9-5 is likely to be a bit of an also ran. We await Saab’s real return, with their next 9-3 in 2012, and the promise of a smaller car, the 92, which could be three years away.
Factfile
Saab 9-5 2.0 Tid Linear
Engine:1956cc 4-cylinder turbo diesel putting out 160hp @ 4,000rpm and 350Nm of torque @1,750rpm, front-wheel drive
Performance:0-100km/h in 9.9 seconds
Maximum Speed:215km/h
Fuel Economy:5.3l/100km CO2 emissions: 139g/km
Motor Tax Band:B
Annual Road Tax:€156
Price:€36,500
Available in Ireland:From September