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As soon as I had kids, my heart was set on a Saab. The car that other cars bounced off. And when I eventually did get behind the wheel of one I relaxed in the knowledge that there was a decent chance my kids were going to survive, no matter how badly I or anyone else drove. Not for the first time, it turns out I was misled. They were safer than most, but it was Volvos that were built like tanks; Saab just did a great job of being Swedish and piggybacking on their sales pitch.
Others bought a Saab because they believed it made them less obviously dull. It was the car of choice for "Snaabs" – creative advertising execs with large specs and asymmetric haircuts, who thought its retro looks were a good match for their dark side. They got it wrong too. A Saab didn't make them look edgy and alternative; just a bit cheap. Too grand for a Ford Focus; too poor for a Merc.
But then a lot of people seem to have got a lot of things wrong about Saab. Not least that it might ever have been a viable car brand. And, as with the other myths, this too is beginning to unravel. General Motors (GM), which panic-bought Saab in 1989 after losing out in bids to acquire Land Rover, Volvo and Jaguar, said earlier this week that it would only sell the Swedish car manufacturer to "sound buyers" able to guarantee an ongoing supply of spare parts to Saab drivers.
GM seems to have rather missed the point. It's the prospective buyers – Dutch firm Spyker Cars and a Luxembourg-based consortium in which Bernie Ecclestone has an interest – that should be giving Saab the beady-eye treatment. From a record high of 133,000 global sales in 2000, Saab slid to 98,000 by 2008. Last year's figures, yet to be officially announced, could prove the death knell. According to inside sources, Saab sold just 21,000 cars worldwide in 2009.
"It's catastrophic," says Professor Garel Rhys, director of the Centre for Automotive Research at Cardiff Business School. "It's hard to imagine how anyone could make a go of Saab as a stand-alone business after results like these. And there have been only a few years that the company hasn't made a loss since it first started making cars in 1952."
To be fair, Saab was never expected to make big kroner. Rather, it was an offshoot of the Swedish Aeroplane Company created both to take up some of the factory's slack once the second world war had ended and to raise the profile of its aviation industry. Saabs have only ever sold in significant numbers in three countries: Sweden, the US and the UK. Elsewhere in Europe the brand was regarded as inferior to anything that Mercedes, BMW and Audi had to offer.
"For the Swedes, it was a home-grown product, while in the US it was an alternative to the Honda Accord," says Rhys. "It's only really in the UK that it acquired a niche cachet. Saab still had to price its cars significantly cheaper than its German rivals to get a share of their market. And, unable either to achieve economies of scale or to brand itself as a premium product with a premium price-tag, it has fallen between two stools."
Even so, Saab did well enough out of dummies like me. We've had various Saabs for more than 10 years now – all of which have been relatively reliable if expensive to maintain – as we fell time and again for their advertising spiel. Or our own inertia. "Even now the company is on its knees I keep hearing the same old stuff being repeated about how innovative it has always been," Rhys laughs. "It's true it was the first car to come with seat belts as standard, but that's hardly big news now. Otherwise, its only real innovations have been the push-button starter and the turbo engine. And the turbo was born of necessity as its cars were underpowered without it."
Time has now caught up with Saab. The recession has hit all car manufacturers, but Saab in particular. Yet the future isn't entirely bleak for anyone still hankering after a piece of treasured Swedish metal. Dealers are likely to drop the prices on new cars just to get rid of any unsold stock, so there could be bargains to be found. But not for me, because I've already got one. The story of my life continues. Buying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
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