The Saab Pages

Saab product offensive. Or is that offensive product?

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.

Saab Infinite Drive

This web ad relates to an earlier Saab marketing campaign, probably marketing the Saab 9-3 Sport Convertible, given that the model featured in the advert is the launch colour lime yellow car.

I don't recall when this ad was used, but it was called 'infinite drive'.  By clicking on the film you can see the same thing happening from different viewpoints.  It takes you through a few different scenes, highway, highway with tunnels, highway with railway crossing, and asks some questions - that I presume are to be thought provoking - along the way.

I suppose that out of context of the marketing campaign this doesn't make sense.  Judge for yourself, here.

Saab Animal Vision

Recognizing that the new Saab 9-5 isn't the only creature prowling the dark forests of Sweden, the Swedish car manufacturer created a stylish website that introduces the various features of the new car through the eyes of a red fox, an eagle owl and other creatures of the night.

By clicking on the glowing eyes of a particular animal, visitors can swing around to observe an actual 9-5 parked on the road from that animal's unique vantage point.

View the website here.

Saab Race Against Time

Back in August 2005 I received some marketing information, through the post, from Saab.  Enclosed was one of those adventure books where you are given a choice and, depending on your choice, turn to page N to continue the adventure.  These books were popular in breakfast cereal packets in about 20 years ago.

I never opened the book and I never completed the adventure, but the marketing letter did refer to a website called Saab Race Against Time which featured a pretty addictive little flash game where you piloted (damn - I've swalloed too much GM propaganda) a Saab 9-3 Sport Combi from London down to the coast.

The idea was that you had to find the quickest route and pick up certain items on the way.  These items reduced the final elapsed time by 30 minutes per item.  Items include matches, lighter, wetsuit, paddles and some others that I forget at this moment. 

The route from London to the coast (the coast in question is unspecified) presents you with a number of choices and, depending on which you choose, the time of the journey will be influenced. 

Should I stop to pick up the hitchhiker, or the surfer-dudes, should I stop for fuel, can I identify the man that the police are looking for?  The decisions that you make influences the time that your journey will take.  Generally speaking, helping people seems to reward you in the end, which must give Saab drivers a warm feeling inside knowing that they are so selfless.

The game itself enters the players into a competition for whom the player with the fastest time wins a Saab 9-3 Aero V6 SportCombi.  The competition itself ran from mid August to 1st November 2005.

What I'd like to know is what was the fastest time?  How much faster was it than my time?  For that matter, did you play the game and what was your best time?

The new Saab 9-3 Aero V6. Pilots wanted.

Just popped into my inbox, right now, is a marketing email from Saab.  White text on a black background is so passe, so 1997, and I am not sure it can be justified.  That aside, the premise of the email is that the new Saab 9-3 Aero V6 - in SportCombi (SportWagon for UK viewers), Saloon (Sedan for ex-colnials) and convertible body-styles - is the stuff of aviators. 

"The new Saab 9-3 Aero V6.  Pilots wanted", says the email, hamming up the long since severed connections of Saab aeronautical heritage that General Motors has never had.  This aircraft heritage thing that the GM propaganda machine keeps pumping out in relation to the little Swedish car maker that they now control is at worst untrue and, at best, amusing.

If we stick with the aviator theme for the moment, and why not - it is nice to dream of actually flying instead of driving - then we have a flash intro with a landscape a night, a runway, a touchdown and an aircraft hangar.  That's the intro to the new Saab 9-3 Aero V6 microsite itself, which is an equally dark affair with red Saab cars inside the hangar. 

Explore the features of the car whilst listening to a eerie, ghostly soundtrack which, I suppose, conveys the emptiness of the skies.  Anyway, not an astounding microsite, but something to click around and kill a few minutes.

The best bit, I found, was that you could listen to the "take-off".  A Saab 9-3 Aero V6 accelerating away.  The exhaust note sounds great, even moreso as I could not hear the blasted thing when I test drove this car two weeks ago.  If this is Saab's sporty model, then I'd like a bit more sportiness.  The refined comfort of the Sport Combi was not the aural sensation that I had hoped for.

Visit the Saab 9-3 Aero V6 email and microsite.