Swedish David Blumbeg wrote a song and put together a mashup of Saab commercials in support of finding a new buyer for Saab. Other enthusiasts have also responded with the website IwontbuyfromGM, looking to lean on the General. For more Saab news check out Saabs United.
greg
I drove my Saab home last night. I could feel the oil and gasoline coursing through it’s veins. The news was bad. Saab may have reached the end of the line, no new offspring to carry on the name. Like an extinct species, Saab has reached the end of the line, mainly because some CEO saw a spot of red ink on his ledger.
“I’m gonna do something about that spot”, says he. “No red ink for me”!
The Saab 92
Who would have thought that a guy could have made his living for his whole adult life on a quirky little car made in another country, and one not made in huge numbers, either. And quirky they were. The engineers from Saab, airplane guys, needed to come up with a car after WWII to diversify their company. They bought some old DKW’s in a junkyard to help design their car. The DKW’s had 2 stroke engines, hence Saab’s first cars did too.
I remember this old country boy I worked with. He did Dodge cars, as our dealership at the time had multiple car lines. He remembered some oddball neighbor of his that had an old 2 stroke Saab. “I used to blow past him so fast I ran him off the road”, he said proudly. He didn’t think much of quirky little foreign cars.
Greg and a 1958 93
On Friday the 11th of December, 2009, the CEO of GM announced that talks were over and they are going to close down Saab. The newspaper guys were hanging out at the shop, like sharks looking for a good story. Saab is heading for the history books, like the dinosaurs, Edsels, and analog tv. I’m going to miss them when they’re gone.
greg
Back here at our Saab dealership, certain cars have taken up what appears to be permanent residency. These cars are waiting for parts that are on serious backorder. I originally thought it was due to the economic slowdown where factories are shuttered till things began again, and that was the problem in the beginning. But now it’s because GM won’t or can’t pay it’s bills from being in bankruptcy court.
We went without fuel pumps for a couple of months.. now I have a car waiting on a switch for the brake vacuum pump, which is kind of a necessary part, for a month now. The supplier in Germany is still making the part, but not giving it up till GM pays for it. And GM isn’t paying for it. And Saab and GM is still paying for rental cars for people still in warranty. (You would think it would be cheaper to just pay for the part.) If you’re out of warranty, your on your own.
However the parts are out there. Sometimes the aftermarket parts are made by the same company, in the same packaging as the original factory supplied part. And they are a lot cheaper as they don’t have the franchise supported markup that dealers are famous for. However, in our case, we are forbidden by franchise rules to use these parts or any other parts not supplied by GM.
Granted, this is a unique situation we are living through, and I will be glad when things get back to normal. But that may be wishful thinking, as normal is probably dead and gone.
greg
The New and Improved 2010 Taurus SHO is a hot rod. Much better than the earlier version that came out in 1989, it takes advantage of newer turbo and direct injection technology. It pumps out over 300 hp from a soon to be standard Ford V-6 eco boost block.
2010 Taurus SHO
The design and quallity control is light years ahead of the old design. (As all cars are today.) The old car’s selling point, and it’s Achilles heel, was the motor. A 24 valve V-6 Yamaha derived engine, it had good power (220hp) and could get to 60 mph in under 7 seconds. However, it was an overly complicated exotic engine stuffed in a basic Ford sedan. (Kind of like the Chrysler TC, a standard Chysler mid sized car with a Maserati engine.) And it was replaced with an aluminum Cosworth V-8 with Yamaha heads and some poor production decisions led to some costly failures. But those problems are behind them now…
2010 Taurus Sedan
But that’s not the real problem. The problem is then, as now, the SHO looks like a standard box stock Taurus. That may have been a draw from the sleeper crowd, (those guys that stuff Corvette engines in old boxy Volvos) but most people do want a car that looks like it is something, even if it isn’t. Take the Mustang for example, a lot more people buy a slow Mustang that looks like a fast one, than there are people who buy a fast Taurus that looks like a slow one.
So come on Ford, dress that thing up a bit…
greg
Roger Penske’s organization is bringing a new way to sell cars, according to USA Today. Everybody is excited about it. Except me, of course.
GM will probably insist that they use their chassis a certain number of years then Mr. Penske can shop around the world for his car. Penske (in this case is not a manufacturer, he is a retailer.) can contract with anybody for anything that rolls and put a Saturn badge on it. And there is nothing to say that this car will even remotely resemble (except for looks) the car that came before it. It could be a Chinese made car one year, and an Indian car the next.
We (at Saab) have been suffering for years with rebadged cars. We have Subarus and GM SUV’s that have Saab badges on them. There is no continuity between the systems in these cars and the Swedish Saabs. Absolutely none, but the grille’s all look alike. The same thing will happen to Saturn. When you open the hood any world engine at all could be in there.
Some people buy cars for a philosophy, or a feeling that they can buy into, like Saab. They were known as quirky cars, and have evolved to an upscale performance car, safe, and good on gas. The new Saturn, which in the beginning tried something new, a cult almost, will now evolve into the Walmart solution, the cheapest outsouced product available.
I wish Roger Penske luck. Our car industry is in big trouble, and obviously new solutions will need to be found. I just hope that our cars will be more than a can of beans at the local supermart.
greg
For some time now, all sorts of manufacturers have been conducting a secret dirty war against repairing anything. This is also aided by a jaded public who seems to be averse to even reading owners manuals, let alone try to fix something.
I just took apart our ailing Staples paper shredder. To it’s credit, this thing was built tough. No plastic parts in there. Also, no parts you can afford either. The rollers and plates and bearings that failed add up to more than the cost of a new one, so off to the landfill with the rest of it. It’s a shame too, as there is a certain joy or satisfaction gained from repairing something. Personally (much to the chagrin of my wife) I don’t let anything go till it’s reached it’s absolute bitter end. (She absolutely refused to drive that escort any longer, a shame really, it was a pretty good little car!)
The same thing is happening to cars too. Sure you can replace brake parts, rebuild engines and such, but after a car gets to be 10 years old, the manufacturers want to drop it like a hot rock. They also piddle around making parts available for them so that you are forced to look elsewhere it you want to keep it going. And where you really get into trouble is the cost of the failed subassemblies. Take your air conditioner in your car for example. The big failure rate includes compressors and evaporator assemblies. These things can be hugely expensive, and in the case of evaporators, aren’t built very well to start with. (You won’t get the manufacturers to admit it though.) Also, try and even buy a part for your home HVAC system, you won’t get many places to even sell you the parts.
But maybe this refrigerator mentality isn’t so bad. After all, it is spawning a huge recycling industry. On the other hand, the landfills around here are starting to look like little mountains. On a positive note, I fixed my toilet the other day, the handle wore out, and a replacement was actually available. Of course, the replacement was made out of plastic, and won’t last as long as the brass one I took out, but you take your victory’s when you can.
greg
Pic from Bikeland.org
I really love motorcycles. I’ve been riding since 1976, and it’s the closest thing to flying without airplanes or drugs. It’s a blast. But, I think we’ve gone too far.
The new Suzuki is a hot rod. It’s about as refined as you can get in a scooter. Gobs of horsepower, revs up to the sky, computers to control all sort of power functions, great feedback from the chassis and on and on.
But, this thing gets to 60 mile an hour in 2 seconds. 2 SECONDS! Not only that but you can get to a hundred miles an hour in 1st gear! Cut it out. what ever happened to running these machines up and down the gears and working the gearbox? Looks like you only need one gear.
It looks to me that only race bike drivers will ever be able to control this thing. It’s too much. As humans, I think we are too good at what we build. We need to back off a little.
greg
I like electricity. I like everything it does for me, between listening to Neil Young on the Ipod to firing the spark plugs and fuel injectors in my Saab. But for the guy who has to fix his own car, it has a price.
And that price involves connectors. No matter how your car is set up, things have to be plugged in, and therein is the rub. I saw some statistics somewhere that electrical problems consume 80 percent of warrenty expenditures. And of that 80%, the majority is connection problems. Auto engineers are hot on the trail of this problem too, but they are really getting on my nerves.
They have made some progress though. 40 years ago, there was only one kind of connector. For each wire. And these connectors could be plugged into anything, so you really had to have some kind of idea where they went. This wasn’t to big of a problem because there were few wires.
Then they started gathering wires into groups. There were connectors with 2 wires in them, then 3, 4, 5 and up. However, all the 2 wire connectors were all the same, so you wouldn’t be able to plug a 3 wire connector into the item, but any 2 wire one would fit. You still had to know where the wires all went.
Engineers finally got the problem, and now no 2 connectors will plug into the same thing. Every last one is different, even though they might look the same. One problem solved, and another problem resulted from this.
Connector locks.
Now connectors hardly ever fall off, but we have new problems. Getting them disconnected. Engineers have bent over backwards to devise locks and even extra locks to keep them from falling off. But sometimes to fix something you have to take it off. And trying to figure out how this or that lock even works is almost a race against your sanity. With the advent of unique connectors for every electrical item in the car comes a unique lock solution for that individual connector. And worse that that, Engineers have devised an extra lock system that locks the original connector lock. This is called the quality assurance locks.
Now, I really have to study the connector to figure how it comes apart. And every now and then I don’t figure it out and end up destroying it. (Oh Well…) I’ve got this problem right now on a vacuum motor for a brake booster on a 2008 Saab Combi. I still haven’t figured it out, but a new motor is coming in tomorrow. Maybe I can get some clues from that…
greg
Looks like GM is heading for bankruptcy court soon. I guess it was inevitable anyway.. Anyway this makes it easier for GM to do something that they’ve been trying to do for years… get rid of their retirees.
It’s true that GM workers have had a good deal in the past. They usually enjoyed above average wages, and get what I think are great benefits when they retire. And they usually retire young. Almost all the GM retirees I know retired at 50. I’m 59 with no end in sight.
I don’t hold it against those guys though. It’s an American’s duty to do the best he can. Hell, he’s got kids to raise and bills to pay like everybody else. I don’t get that kind of a deal, but if I signed up with a company that promised retirement and worked 30 years for them, and they dropped me like a hot rock, I’d be pretty upset.
Well, I guess that’s the American way now, lower wages and no benefits. Sound to me though that GM isn’t living up to their bargains. The 3rd Mad Max movie, Beyond Thunderdome, had the answer. “Break a deal, face the wheel!”
It’s a shame corporations are faceless and unfeeling entities, I’d like to see a few CEO’s face the wheel.
greg
I had to fix the boss’s toy yesterday, a chinese go-kart imported by Manco in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The boss wanted a new tire, a new kill switch, tuneup and all fluids changed. And he doesn’t have any owners manual, etc, to go with it.
A quick internet search got me everything I needed. All the parts lists and repair manuals and anything you could possibly want to or need to know about this little machine are all wrapped up in PDF documents and free for the asking. Everything is available here.
Admittedly this is just a cheap gokart but why hasn’t the car business done this? Manufacturers of all kinds of stuff do this for their customers, any kind of computer equipment has drivers and support info online. What do you get from Ford, say? Thousands of documents that don’t pertain to anything useful.
I know, there is a large industry grown up around this need, and you’re fooling with their jobs. You can get this information online, but at quite a cost. If you want online access to major american car info, it’s about $2500 dollars a year. You can usually get a big paper manual on a specific car for one or two hundred dollars. That really is a lot of money, especially since the father of a normal family has about 4 or 5 cars laying around, and they all need to be fixed occasionally. And it’s not like you didn’t already pay a ton of money for these cars in the first place. But it seems to the manufacturers that your just paying to rent them not own them.
Anyhow, my hat is off to Manco for doing it right, and not to Ford or Chevrolet who want to keep their info to themselves and their clique.
greg
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