Spyker sues GM

[Dave Brand]

Originally Posted by mountainstar

Um, yes there was engineering done by Saab. It is correct that Saab used other vehicle platforms, but engineered them to their own purposes. You can do your own research and talk to Saab experts, but around 50-80% of the parts will not fit from other GM vehicles.

Engineering, yes, but NOT "reverse engineering" as you claimed. "Reverse engineering" is the process of taking a competitor's product, dismantling it & replicating it. With free access to GM designs SAAB had no need to go through the "reverse engineering" process!

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by GORDON STREETER

....As for "selling cheaper than they are built for" it took years and years before BL found out that the Mini was sold for £10 cheaper than it was made !

Although Dagenham knew in 1959 but didn't tell them.

[b1ackcr0w]

Originally Posted by GORDON STREETER

Interesting reading through this thread as I have a few Saab's on my books including a couple of the last ones before they finally went under.
I agree that certain parts are probably over engineered but if you actually work on them day to day certain models have serious crankshaft/bearing failures necessitating engine replacement.
The problem will be replacement Saab parts but aftermarket service items will be OK of course.
As for "selling cheaper than they are built for" it took years and years before BL found out that the Mini was sold for £10 cheaper than it was made !

As a nota bene to any Saab 9-5 owners, most of the catastrophic engine failures are due to the wrong oil being replaced during servicing. I can't remember the exact details, but I think it goes back as far as the petrol unit for the 9000. There's a mesh filter which gets clogged if you use mineral or semi synthetic oils. If you have a 9-5, and get it serviced at a non Saab specialist, make sure you really hammer home the point that you want Fully Synthetic only.

[barnettracing]

Originally Posted by mountainstar

Ultimately Saab was a dead dog anyways. The company had lost money for over 20 years. After Saabs debacle with FIAT, GM bought 50% and then 10 years later bought the company entirely, constantly trying to turn it around and it never happened.

Um, hate to break this to you but, GM did all it could to continue Saab's unprofitability. GM continually mismanaged its brands through layers of bureaucracy and a lack of proper investment in product.

To say GM were 'constantly trying to turn it around' is as wide of the mark as you could get. Once Saab was purchased entirely by GM it no longer existed as Saab. It became just another GM brand. GM mismanaged it and it died. Just like GM mismanaged plenty of their car brands.

I can't see Spyker winning the lawsuit though. At the end of the day, as galling as it was to see GM prevent the use of their IP, it is well within the rules.

[b1ackcr0w]

I think one of the biggest shames about Saab is that a lot of the small detail improvements they had didn't/won't get a chance to become standard. I'm thinking of relatively inexpensive things that are just a better way of doing standard parts. For example, somebody at Saab had obviously had a good look into Sun Glare. As well as fitting stupidly expensive glass which did the cost damage, the also had the genius idea of fitting dual sun visors. The first one can fold forward or to the side, and the second could fold forward if the first was folded to the side. So if the car was at an odd angle to the sun, and you get glare from the side and front, you have a visor in both positions instead of having to keep moving the one visor. Brilliant!

I've had my Saab about a year now, and hardly a week goes by where I don't notice some little difference where real care and thought is in the design. I really don't understand why if a car can be economically fitted with an automatic parking system, collision avoidance, voice commands, head up displays, triangular exhausts (all features you can buy on dealer forecourts!), why did ignition keys that don't smash your knees up, rear folding seats that indicate if they're locked in position and under-door illumination broke the bank at Saab? (and haven't been emulated elsewhere.)

[GORDON STREETER]

I had an old 900 turbo dumped on me to see if it would pass an MOT, after having a poke about underneath I can honestly say that I hadn't seen a car as rot (not talking rust) as that for a long time and showed it to the customer whilst it was still on the ramp !
However he put it on Ebay and sold it easily to some mug that thought it was a "collectors item"

[Peter Mallett]

Crow, I've always liked the sun visor thing. All the Mercedes I've driven have it.

[Dave Brand]

Originally Posted by b1ackcr0w

rear folding seats that indicate if they're locked in position and under-door illumination broke the bank at Saab? (and haven't been emulated elsewhere.)

Most of the cars I've had have had some indication that the rear seats are not locked in place, either by the locking handle not fully retracting or by some sort of red indication showing. If by under-door illumination you mean lights which light the ground under the car when the door is open, my late, unloved Alfa 147 had them, as do many cars.

[Peter Mallett]

Off topic comment alert I have to type this or my brain will explode! On the subject of copyright, I found out by accident that Ford owns the rights to the heated windscreen technology that they use in their cars. Many thought it was a VW invention but in fact Ford sold them a licence to use it. Thanks for reading, you've been a wonderful audience. Don't forget to try the veal and tip your waitress. We now return you to the topic

[grantp]

Having been a Ford person since learning to drive in the family Cortina GT (good fun) and a Vauxhall Viva HB driving school car to get to know the test routes (utterly aweful thing) I was never a great fan of GM products. I will admit to owning a coupld of minis as first and second cars - as one did at the time - but after that it was Escorts, Cortinas and Sierras unless the employer at the tiome had other ideas (Renault 12, a Dreadful old Maxi for a while and a Datsun Sunny that was half decent.)

Then one day I stumbled across a used Vauxhall Senator 24V. I decided that, being a prestige Opel in reality, it might be fun as a motorway cruiser for not much money. And it was. With 100k on the clock after 4 years it still went well and not much went wrong with it except the aircon - which needed charging every year. To be fair that was probably connected to an EU regulated change of refrigerant gas connected to CFC laws.

The worst problem in about 3 years and 75k miles of ownership was an LSD failure and a refurb unit fixed that for a few hundred quid. In the end it was getting to the point where rust was into the rear wheel arches, parts that were due to fail were getting scarce due to low production numbers and mine being from near the end of the model lifespan and the aircon, cruise control and a few other things all needing attention. SO I chopped it for a V6 24V Omega - the car that replaced the Senator. That too was about 4 years old at time of purchase but only 60k miles.

The Omega was a nice enough car to use, most of the time, but no Senator. And reliability was terrible. Really dreadful. No way that it was a reasonable direct replacement for the Senator in its target marketplace. Perhaps that is why most were shifted at a large discount. There seemed to be some very poor design and engineering involved for a 'prestige' car.

At 135k miles the Omega was showing so many signs of being at an of life that I traded it for a Saab 9-5 Aero Estate with a huge mileage. Now, my travelling is much less than I had expected so the Saab has only clocked up 130k even though it is now ten years old. I've owned it for almost 8 years. It's not perfect but still very comfortable and very satisfying to drive. Passed this year's MOT test with no comments. Last year we had to do something with brake piping but realistically that is not unreasonable at 9 years old.

The attention to detail in the 'metal' engineering is just amazing. IIRC the model was originally launched in 1997 and there are still quite a few early ones looking like they are in very good condition driving around.

Saab, at least with the 9-5, seemed to have got back to the Pre-Fiat, Pre-GM reputation that they had for longevity in the days of the 99. I have some friends who inherited a 99 when it was about 16 years old and continued to run it for some years and a rarely maintained second car until it was finally left to rot at the bottom of their garden. There were not many cars of its era that would survive so long treated that way.

Quirky and very niche market oriented but Saab was more often than not a quality, long life product when fully controlled by Saab management, which is more than can be said for most mainstream GM output even iin their 'premium' ranges, in my opinion.

Could they have survived independently? Probably not - few manufacturers are still truly independant. Could GM have made better us of their asset? Almost certainly - but when has a finance company ever cared about the longer term? When you seek planned obsolescence over a very short period, as was traditional in the US market, the idea of something that will last for years must cause palpitations. Hence the forcing of GM 'IP' into Saab when going the other way would (and seemingly eventually did) make more sense. In the end whose IP are they trying to 'protect' from other manufacturers?