And the famous 'Saab turbocharging technology' was simply off the shelf Borg Warner and Garratt turbos. There is no point having aspirations of being a carmaker if you can't see an area in the market in which you can do better than everyone else.

If you simply scrounge around in other companies' parts bins, all you end up with are weak copies that, at best, are no better than the originals.

You can sum up Saab's raison d'etre of late: not being a BMW 3 series. This is silly. The BMW 3 series is a fine machine and the fact that they are more common than the ford Mondeo does not make them any less good.

As was the unloved 2.2tid-I think. GM burnt their fingers several times when they tried to build diesels in house. Ford had terrible trouble with Navistar. Interesting that it took American automakers a long time to get diesels right, which is odd because American Heavy Duty diesels are very good. The japs seemd to pick up oil burning technology quite quickly-if we ignore Mazda's first effort!

fuel economy is not on their radar.

That's not entirely true. The US has had CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards since '73-something Europe has thus far not done.

GM tried to build a 4.3 and a 5.7 diesel V8 in the late seventies-and it was a disaster. Contrary to poular belief it was not a converted gas engine-the identical displacement being a coincidence.

The US has tougher NOx standards than Europe and this makes diesels less attractive than in Europe. Look at VAGs diesel offerings stateside-the rated fuel economy is far less (31/41US mpg-37-49 UK mpg for the 2.0 Golf estate. gasoline hybrid is the choice of powertrain over there-whereas in Europe this is a niche market.

Edited by unthrottled on 25/06/2011 at 19:20

Update http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/258042/. I'm a Saab fan but this investment needs to be more.

I see SAAB has just sold 600 cars to China cheap. Maybe they wouldn't be in this mess had they been selling cars at a similar price to the rest of us as well. Instead of asking too much for a second rate product.

After all Tesco's pile it high and sell them cheap' motto seems to have done them no harm. Anyone recall Rover buying the Citycar in from India for about two and half grand then expecting us to buy that tatt (oh sorry TATA) for over double that. Greed is their problem as much as the GM stodgy chassis' and indifferent diesel engines.

You could write a film about the saga. This could be about to come to a resolution. Shame another Swede is going for a Chinese takeaway price.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-saab-pangda-youngman-idUSTRE79R0PS20111028

I had one.

All the above, let down by that god-awful Triumph engine with its Byzantine cooling system with the water pump stuck into the engine and driven off an idler shaft. Great car, but the words "SAAB water pump" still cause me to have an attack of the vapours.

Odd bit. The ba***-ackwards arrangement of the drivetrain meant it was possible to free a seized clutch by hammering a chisel between it and the flywheel, the whole arrangement being exposed beneath a plastic shroud. Yes I did, a last resort at the time having exhausted all the usual clutch freeing tricks.

Really odd bit. Looking up the Wiki article on the '99, I see that the prototype was badged as a Daihatsu for disguise purposes. Apparently it was a valid name that could be made up using letters out of the SAAB parts bin. Looking at the pic, I doubt they fooled anyone.....