A Saab to change underwear to
I’m not exactly a fan of Saabs. It is often said that they embody the same minimalist cool as all things Scandinavian, but I just find them boring. Their sad slide into oblivion under GM ownership doesn’t help things either, with vehicles like the ancient 9-5 and the 9-7, a rebadged Chevy SUV.
This might be a precarious position to voice at my place of employment, where the number of Saabs owned by my coworkers probaby exceeds, well, the number of my coworkers. Just yesterday I learned that GZ, our resident commercial vehicle expert truck nerd owns three of them and that he’d met his girlfriend at a Saab meetup a week after acquiring his first Saab.
Saab has this often stressed aerospace heritage as it was founded by a group of aeronautical engineers. These days, it’s mostly just an empty buzzword and the Born From Jets ad campaign, probaby designed to mask the sorry state they’re in.
Until today.
Because what they unveiled at the Geneva Auto Show, the Aero-X concept, is one of the coolest cars I’ve ever seen. They should put it into production immediately. I have no idea how they managed to build it after all these years of dreadful blandness. But the Aero-X is just brilliant, with a grille that evokes fighter jets, a windshield that slides forward like a cockpit, and a classically proportioned coupé silhouette.
![[The Saab Aero-X concept. Source: saabusa.com]](http://kzamm.com/media/pictures/2006_02_28_saabaerox.jpg "The Saab Aero-X concept. Source: saabusa.com")
Perhaps the people at Trollhattan subscribe to Robert Farago’s GM Death Watch and bookmarked part 15? Which goes:
From now on, all Saab’s are designed like jet fighters. We’re talking electronics (heads-up display, night vision, headsets, military-style gauges, sat nav.), aerodynamics (world’s lowest cd, active surfaces), aircraft construction (aluminum, carbon fiber, memory plastics) and ergonomics (cockpit seating, four point belts, maximum visibility). If you build it, it will fly.
Maybe all Saab needed was Christian von Koenigsegg to design his glorious 800-horsepower death machine next door.
Arise, Swedes!
UPDATE: Ouch. Farago again:
GM is fully committed to integrating the Saab brand into the bureaucratic clusterfuck known as GM’s “global vehicle development system.†Saab’s ignition key slot will remain in between the front seats, but the decisions about its major components will now be taken somewhere a long way away from Sweden. And the choices will be made by a series of committees with far greater responsibilities than “just†Saab.
—Robert Farago: General Motors Death Watch 59: X Marks the Spot
Farago makes me want to cry.
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