NY Times artikkel SAABist

For Saab, Some See the Beginning of the End. Others See the Middle

May 24, 2004
By JAMIE LINCOLN KITMAN

Saab loyalists have predicted the worst ever since General Motors bought its initial 50 percent stake in the Swedish automaker, for $500 million, in 1990. But an announcement last week by Saab Cars USA - that it would relocate its home office from Norcross, Ga., to G.M.'s world headquarters in the Renaissance Center in Detroit - was seen as the final bit of proof that the odd little automaker, an upstart not so long ago, has indeed been integrated into the world's largest industrial company.

G.M. did not complete its financial takeover of Saab until 2000, but longtime fans of the brand - known for its early adoption of front-wheel drive, innovations in turbocharging and its longstanding commitment to air quality and safety - started grumbling loudly when the company’s first product under G.M. ownership, the Saab 900 of 1994, made its debut.

The 9-5, also introduced for that year and still in production today, was based on Opel underpinnings, too, but was less underbaked and better received, though it, too, has yet to become a significant object of Saab aficionados’ desire. Among other turnoffs, it was the first Saab to offer a V-6 engine, a lightly re-engineered version of an Opel power plant that seemed rather less sophisticated than Saab’s trademark turbo four-cylinders.

Based heavily on the Opel Vectra, the 900 handled clumsily, suffered alarming quality lapses and was later reported to have done poorly in Swedish crash testing. A freshening for the 1999 model year was said to incorporate more than 1,300 improvements - reflecting, critics said, a car that needed a lot of improvement.

The 9-5, also introduced for that year and still in production today, was based on Opel underpinnings, too, but was less underbaked and better received, though it, too, has yet to become a significant object of Saab aficionados’ desire. Among other turnoffs, it was the first Saab to offer a V-6 engine, a lightly re-engineered version of an Opel power plant that seemed rather less sophisticated than Saab’s trademark turbo four-cylinders.

Like all post-G.M. Saabs, the 9-5 retained the company’s signature center-console placement of its ignition switch. Naysayers wonder if that minor character trait has become the marque’s sole distinguishing characteristic in the eyes of Saab’s new masters. While the ignition switches all remain on the consoles, the proof of Saab’s lost independence has come in waves.

In 2002, Debra Kelly-Ennis was named president of Saab’s American operations. With just three years’ experience in the car business (most of it at G.M.’s moribund Oldsmobile division, where she was charged with turning out the lights), she had little prior exposure to the Saab culture.

Far more worrisome to the keepers of the faith, last year G.M. laid off 1,300 engineers and designers at Saab’s world headquarters in Trolhattan, Sweden, effectively eliminating the company’s in-house ability to engineer a car. And just recently, Saab’s head of design, a rising star named Michael Mauer, quit to work for Porsche.

The inevitability of the mass firing in Sweden can be understood by reference to Saab’s most recent product. A new 9-3 released last year was largely designed by Opel. It shares G.M.’s Epsilon platform with the Pontiac G6 and the Chevy Malibu, as well as the newest Opel Vectra and a Saturn model yet to come. The new 9-3 sedan is a conventional three-box design, losing Saab’s distinctive and roomy hatchback configuration. Also, the car’s American-German engineering has chafed some loyalists, though in fairness not nearly so much as the two newest Saabs, the 9-2X and 9-7X.

The former is a lightly retouched, duller handling and slightly more expensive version of Subaru’s subcompact Impreza WRX sedan and wagon, built for Saab in Japan by Subaru (of which G.M. owns 20 percent). Authenticity issues aside, the turbocharged, all-wheel-drive WRX is, at least, the sort of car that Saab might have built today if it had only received enough financing in the 1990’s. Like the rally-winning Saab 96’s of the 1960’s, the 9-2X wrings maximum advantage from being a light car with a small engine and loads of grip.

The 9-7X, by contrast, is a lightly restyled Chevrolet TrailBlazer built in Ohio. In its bulk and its cumbersome ways, with its optional V-8 engine’s thirst and heavy carbon-dioxide emissions, it is the very antithesis of the Saab ethos. (But, hey, check out the ignition hardware in the center console.)

A former Saab executive who was at the company when General Motors first took over has suggested that Saab’s failure to retain its identity is not so much the fault of G.M. as of the Wallenberg family. The former majority owners of Saab, the Wallenbergs agreed to sell G.M a half interest with the clear understanding that they and their minions would be abdicating any meaningful further role in Saab’s future.

‘When they sold it, they should have insisted on input, using their executives and remaining true to the company’s ideals,‘ this executive said. ‘But they rolled over and said, ‘You run it.’ G.M.’s got its problems, but it’s the Swedes’ fault. They gave away their heritage. General Motors is just doing what they know how to do, the way they know how to do it.’

The former Saab executive added that a ‘powerful industry watcher’ told him at the time: ‘ ‘You know what a Ghia badge looks like on the side of a Ford? That’s what’s going to happen to Saab.’ I’ve carried that thought for almost the last 15 years and I’m sorry to have to say, at the end of the day, he was right.’