Saab's marketing department looks to be on the offensive with a new product launch where, in fact, the new product to be launched is, itself, offensive.
You've got to thank your guardian angel that it is not your job to flog this dinosaur of a motor. First launched in August 1997, the Saab 9-5 was tarted up in August 2002 with new front and rear lamps and new bumpers. A further revision to bumpers in August 2004 seemed like a desperate attempt to keep the design from going stale.
Since the departure of uber-design god Michael Mauer to Porsche (easy job that one, all their motors look the same), GM has moved Saab design to a new European design centre in Russelsheim, Germany, where they will cook up their very own take on Swedish design. If the model year 2006 Saab 9-5 is anything to go by then you should be afraid. Be very afraid.
The Saab 9-5 may be in it's senior years, but it does not seem willing to just fade away. Instead, in a demonstration of clear lack of taste, GM's design team has deigned to adorn the 9-5 with bling. Gone is the stealth aspect of a smart but unassuming looking car and in comes the brash styling of thick chrome headlamp surrounds and staggered tail-lamps.
What was once Einar Hariede's beautifully scuplted - as if hewn directly from blocks of Swedish granite - BMW 5-series competing Saab Saloon is now a dog's dinner. A visully awkward and incoherent design mess.
Take three designers, put them in separate rooms and ask them to design front middle and arse-end and this is what you'll end up with. They really should have commissioned those monkeys once they were done churning out the complete works of Shakespeare. I'm sure they'd have come up with a more coherent looking car.
So, when you're up against something as ugly as the new Saab 9-5 you really do have your work cut out. So what to do? Well, why not call the car a 'beast' and set about some tortuously incomprehensible marketing 'strategy'? OK, that's what they have done.
Following a link from an advert on Top Gear you are taken to The new breed 9-5, Unleashed 01.12.05 microsite from Saab. It's yet another triumph of design over function, style over substance, ego over sensibility. There's a bit of Flash stuff in that I don't mean it is good, I mean that it is made with Macromedia Flash. You can then click through to a choice of three options: Explore, Register and Forward.
Explore allows you to peek into three corners of a crate to see the tail-lamp, the headlamp and the front wheel/foglamp. That's all I can get it to do.
Register allows you to sign up to, presumably, allow you to receive your spam through the hole in your front door.
Forward allows you to send details of the site to a friend, altthough why you might want to confuse any other poor bugger is beyond comprehension.
Supposing you do register ...yes, I'm a sucker... once your details have been submitted you are shown a screen with a keypad that is beckoning you to enter a code. WTF? I can tell you that it is not 9506 - guessed from the eminently logical numbers from 'Saab 9-5 model year 2006'.
What is the code? What is beyond the keypad? Why the secret squirrel stuff from the GM propaganda machine. Make it difficult for people to understand and/or find the information then I suspect that you are likely to lose a lot of your audience at the first hurdle. It has certainly lost me.
Mind you, given that the 2006 model year 9-5 is such a shocking site there is good reason to keep it under wraps behind electronically controlled keypad security.
Our roads will be a much safer place if the new Saab 9-5 is not on them scaring other road users.
Saab. Word of advice. It's horrible. Keep it locked up.
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