GM prepares to kill off Saab

bone said:
i hate you GM
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I hate GM, but I have to agree with them here. What are they suppose to do? Remember Saab was going out of buinsess when GM bought them in the first place. If it wasn't for GM they would have been dead in the early 90s.

So now GM has a big money pit called Saab. Why should they continue to prop them up? Saab's only hope was to be reinvented. GM can't afford it, and no one is willing to do it.
 
CraigB said:
Not sure about that. Mini had an iconic shape, Saab has had shapeless hatchbacks for as long as I remember.
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I'd say that the weird classic Saab 900 shape is distinctive enough to stand out. Whether it'd be popular is a different matter, but that's an issue for the marketing and styling folks.
 
CraigB said:
Not sure about that. Mini had an iconic shape, Saab has had shapeless hatchbacks for as long as I remember.
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A "shapeless" hatchback is, I dunno, a Yaris or an Aveo. Like it or not, the 900S's silhouette was iconic.
 
I think the problem with SAAB is that the people that used to buy SAABs now buy Citroens or high-end bicycles. There's just not enough of a market to support 2 (relatively) large scale quirky auto manufacturers these days. :(
 
Even in the US where Citroen doesn't exist SAABs don't sell.
 
argatoga said:
Even in the US where Citroen doesn't exist SAABs don't sell.
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I'm speaking from an Australian perspective here, but the kinds of people that used to buy SAABs tend to live in the inner city. As such, many of them would rather buy an expensive bicycle than a SAAB these days. Having said that, if SAAB were owned by someone that actually had any idea of what they were about, they could have thrived in their own niche.

Born from jets, died from GM incompetence. R.I.P. SAAB.
 
Never thought I'd say this, but GM's being unfairly singled out as the incompetent owner of a formerly great brand here. As has been said before, Saab was already losing money even before GM started taking stakes in it; it kept it alive longer than it could've done. GM was just the doctor putting the dying patient on life support, and now that it's pulling the plug, people are forgetting that they were the ones that allowed it to survive way beyond its natural life.
 
Saabs are for nice people. Obviously there aren't any left.
 
So all of the development of the new 9-5 is down the drain? Um...really GM. Rebadge it as something else it deserves to live on just because it looked different.

Slap a Pontiac badge on it to make it a good partner car to the G8, wait...
Slap a Satur... DAMMIT JUST SELL A GOOD CAR DAMMIT GET RID OF THE CHEVY GARBAGE AND SELL THE 9-5 AS THE NEXT IMPALA. But name it something else.
 
Labcoatguy said:
Never thought I'd say this, but GM's being unfairly singled out as the incompetent owner of a formerly great brand here. As has been said before, Saab was already losing money even before GM started taking stakes in it; it kept it alive longer than it could've done. GM was just the doctor putting the dying patient on life support, and now that it's pulling the plug, people are forgetting that they were the ones that allowed it to survive way beyond its natural life.
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I see what you're saying, but I what gets to me is that GM doesn't seem to be able to sell anything.

GM has a pathological inability to seal a deal. Seriously, how hard can it be to sell a division? Yet, Saturn, Saab twice, Opel, all talked up and then fucked up. They've only pulled off the Hummer one, and frankly I'm stunned that hasn't come back as a failure.

I'm not saying that Koenigsegg or Spyker (or Penske, or Magna-Sperbank, etc.) would have had success, but why is taking their money so difficult?
 
Saabs have never really interested me since GM took them over. I kind of miss the the old "baseball hat" 900's.

What is sad is that the company went down in a whimper, unlike Studebaker for example who released the Avanti and then said "fuck it, we're done."
 
So you're saying Saab should have put out something ridiculously ugly while at the same time ending production of the few other models they still had, then shut down?
 
jayhawk said:
Saabs have never really interested me since GM took them over. I kind of miss the the old "baseball hat" 900's.

What is sad is that the company went down in a whimper, unlike Studebaker for example who released the Avanti and then said "fuck it, we're done."
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Turbo X.
 
NAIDANAC A said:
So all of the development of the new 9-5 is down the drain? Um...really GM. Rebadge it as something else it deserves to live on just because it looked different.

Slap a Pontiac badge on it to make it a good partner car to the G8, wait...
Slap a Satur... DAMMIT JUST SELL A GOOD CAR DAMMIT GET RID OF THE CHEVY GARBAGE AND SELL THE 9-5 AS THE NEXT IMPALA. But name it something else.
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The new 9-5 platform-shares with the Insignia, which in turn platform-shares with the new Buick Regal and Buick LaCrosse. So maybe XWD with eLSD could find its way onto the new Buick sedans? Could you imagine a Regal Grand National with a 300 horsepower turbo V6 and torque-vectoring AWD?
 
Mitlov said:
The new 9-5 platform-shares with the Insignia, which in turn platform-shares with the new Buick Regal and Buick LaCrosse. So maybe XWD with eLSD could find its way onto the new Buick sedans? Could you imagine a Regal Grand National with a 300 horsepower turbo V6 and torque-vectoring AWD?
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Yeah, but the thing is the Buick is hideous and boring compared to the 9-5. I mean it was at least in the right direction of design. So just badge engineer that and make something new. Even a bloody Malibu replacement...please.
 
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