Sam Phillips’s affectionate column gets the central point right: Saab remains culturally recognizable long after production ended. Its compressed account of the GM years, however, needs correcting in several places.
On July 14, 2026, Autocar published a short opinion column with a headline built to travel: “Saab had 99 problems, but it never made a boring car.” There was no anniversary behind it, no auction result and no revival rumor. Writer Sam Phillips had simply encountered a scene from the American sitcom The Goldbergs and found himself thinking about Saab. That absence of a conventional news hook is precisely what makes the piece worth examining.
In the scene, Erica Goldberg’s mother suggests another boy, Bruce, as a possible date – someone who supposedly drives a cooler car than a Mustang 5.0: a Saab.
Erica’s confusion is the joke, but the exchange preserves a real piece of 1980s social coding: a Mustang announced horsepower and adolescent confidence, while a Saab suggested its driver had made a less predictable decision. Phillips accepts the comparison, sketches Saab’s aircraft origins and GM years, and admits he’d take either a 900 Turbo 16S or a second-generation 9-5 with the 2.8-liter turbo V6. He imagines a surviving Saab sitting near Polestar today, with the Gripen E as its spiritual reference point.
None of that is new to Saab enthusiasts. What matters is where it ran: Autocar is a mainstream British title covering a market full of Chinese entrants, software-defined EVs and interchangeable premium crossovers – and an editor can still write that he wants a Saab, confident readers will understand why. That’s the actual story.
A Saab Is Still Cultural Shorthand
Phillips doesn’t open with the 99 Turbo, Trionic or a rally result – he opens with a sitcom joke, and the Saab in it isn’t just period furniture. Its driver is meant to be more interesting than the boy with the Mustang, despite being less obvious and less aggressive.
Saab occupied that position for decades: expensive enough to rival premium brands, rarely bought for conventional status, appealing to buyers who wanted performance without the usual signals. Phillips frames Saab ownership as an alternative to the predictable classic BMW or Mercedes – desirable precisely because it doesn’t require the collector hierarchy’s approval. That’s a sharper observation than another tribute to Swedish individuality.
Where the Aircraft Story Gets Too Convenient
The broad outline is correct: Saab began Project 92 in 1945, unveiled its first car in June 1947, and began regular production in 1949, with aircraft engineers shaping the original body’s aerodynamics. But the familiar narrative can make every odd Saab feature look like it came straight from a fighter cockpit.
Autocar lists the console-mounted ignition switch alongside the wraparound windshield as an aviation flourish, but it was actually part of a combined ignition/gear-lever lock – Saab manuals describe it as tied to the transmission lock, requiring a manual car to be in reverse before the key could be removed. That doesn’t make it less interesting; it makes it more Saab-like – a detail shaped by safety, security and packaging rather than a decorative attempt to imitate an aircraft cockpit. The aviation heritage is most convincing in methodology — aerodynamics, visibility, structural thinking – not in decorative parallels.
Where Autocar’s Compressed Timeline Needs More Precision
Several details in that compressed history need qualification:
- “71 years” of few models: this only works with a very broad definition. Saab’s own account runs from the 1945 project start (or 1947 unveiling, or 1949 production) to Saab Automobile’s December 2011 bankruptcy – closer to 62–64 years. The underlying point stands (Saab ran remarkably few model lines: 92→93→96, 99→900, 9000, then 9-3/9-5), but that reflects both iconic longevity and constrained development resources.
- GM’s 50% stake: the percentage itself is correct – GM became a 50% co-owner of Saab Automobile in 1989 and acquired the remaining shares in 2000. What needs qualification is the implication that the relationship produced little beyond corporate control and badge engineering. GM funding and shared architectures also enabled cars that remained recognizably Saab, including the original 9-5, the 9-3 Viggen, Turbo X, 9-4X and 9-5 NG.
- The first 9-3’s “shorter wheelbase” than the Vectra doesn’t check out. The 900 NG (the 9-3’s basis) and the contemporary Opel Vectra A both used a 2,600 mm wheelbase. Saab’s reengineering of the shared GM2900 architecture – body, interior, suspension tuning, hatchback packaging, safety development – was real and substantial without needing an invented wheelbase difference. The navigation-system anecdote Autocar attaches to this car actually belongs to the second-generation 9-5, as recalled by former dealer Chris Perrett in Autocar’s own 2021 used-buying guide.
Two 9-5 Programs, Not One Story of Retaliation
Autocar suggests GM canceled an incoming Saab-platform 9-5 in retaliation for the reengineered first 9-3. In fact, Saab’s ambitious independent large-car proposal, Project 106 (which explored four-wheel steering), was canceled in 1993 for cost and platform-strategy reasons and replaced by Project 640 – which became the production 9-5 on a GM-related platform.
There were real conflicts over Saab’s development costs and habit of altering shared components, but compressing them into one linear “stubborn engineers vs. irritated Detroit” narrative sacrifices chronology for a tidier story.
The 9-5 NG: More Interesting Than a Two-Star Verdict
Phillips is honestly conflicted here – he repeats Autocar’s harsh early verdict on the final 9-5, notes it launched before development was finished, then admits he still wants the V6. That contradiction is the column’s best moment, and Autocar’s own archive supports it: Matt Prior’s April 2011 test of pre-production 9-5 SportWagons with revised chassis settings scored 7/10, praising accurate, satisfying steering. A decade later, Autocar’s used-car guide called the car handsome, classy and a future classic.
A detailed production report based on factory and VIN data puts the total at 11,315 series-production cars, plus a smaller group of pre-production and prototype vehicles, before Saab’s liquidity crisis stopped regular manufacturing in 2011. Time has separated the car’s genuine early weaknesses from the competitive pressure of a 2010 road test – it deserves to be seen as a car with a strikingly coherent exterior, XWD, HiPer Strut suspension, DriveSense damping and a head-up display, not just a casualty.
Polestar Isn’t Enough of a Template
The Polestar comparison works visually – restrained Scandinavian design, a customer who skips the default German badge – but a revived Saab couldn’t survive on minimalism alone. Saab’s strongest cars were shaped by specific operating priorities: high-speed stability, winter usability, turbocharged midrange performance, safety systems built from real accident data. A credible modern Saab would need to solve ordinary driving problems other manufacturers overlook, not just recreate the look.
Engineers vs. Accountants Is Too Easy an Ending
Autocar closes with Saab engineers refusing to accept inadequate solutions, defeated by the accountants. True in part — Saab did repeatedly over-engineer shared hardware. But this reduces a genuine industrial failure to a personality clash. Saab suffered from insufficient scale, expensive development, long product cycles and gaps in its range; GM restricted it in real ways, but Saab also never converted engineering credibility into the volume needed to fund its own future.
The 2008 financial crisis then destabilized GM itself at the worst possible moment for its Swedish subsidiary. Saab Automobile filed for bankruptcy in December 2011. The tension between engineering ambition and commercial reality produced some of Saab’s best work – and also the conditions that made the company vulnerable.
Autocar Got the Important Part Right
The historical shortcuts are worth correcting, especially from a publication with Autocar’s reach. But none of them undercuts Phillips’s real point: in 2026, a writer at a major British title can watch an old sitcom clip, reject the expected BMW or Mercedes classic, weigh the tax bill on a 2.8 V6 9-5 NG, and conclude that what he actually wants is a Saab. Nearly fifteen years after Saab Automobile filed for bankruptcy, that remains a clearly understood choice: an attitude, and a rejection of the default answer. Autocar’s history was compressed into three minutes. Its conclusion didn’t need correcting.
As the proud owner of a 2010 SAAB 9-5 NG Aero I also appreciate someone recognizing the SAAB nameplate.
The video give me a good chuckle.
Thanks for this posting!
Thank you – and it is always good to hear from a fellow 2010 Saab 9-5 NG Aero owner. The video was amusing, but it also showed how strongly the Saab name still registers, even with people who may never have owned one.
That continued recognition, more than fourteen years after production ended, was exactly what made the Autocar piece worth discussing.
Pity the mainstream motoring media didn’t appreciate the brand this much when it was in existence. All I remember is a bunch of BMW fanboy’s.