Originally presented on Portfolio.com
Howard Belk, a marketing executive and Saab aficionado, laments the passing of the quirky Swedish car brand—or, as he calls it, the first “Smart Car.”
Entrusting the Saab brand to General Motors has been a disaster. Instead of protecting the proprietary features that define Saab, GM has shared brand differentiators with competitive GM brands and even now intends to sell Saab technologies to Beijing Automotive Industry Holdings Co. Ltd.
Not only has GM made no apparent effort to understand the essence of Saab and what revs the Saab buyer, they have also imposed the endless GM design vetting process (a.k.a. an innovation-killing time machine) on Saab’s idiosyncratic aesthetic. The results have been disastrous.
This is especially sad to the small and, yes, quirky segment of drivers who mourn the killing of Saab. These are not the “car guys” who have welcomed the resurrection of the Mustang and Charger. And they’re not the drivers of generic Toyotas and Hondas.
For many years, Saab held the unique position of the quirky car for intelligent drivers (or, better said, the intelligent car for quirky drivers). Like the Karmann Ghia or Citroen, Saab has never yearned to be the status symbol that a BMW or Mercedes is. One of a kind, created by the Swedish air-force design team, it was for owners that were involved with their cars at a level deeper than the mere cosmetic. It conferred a status more cerebral than temporal.
My colleague Ben’s dad was an early serial-Saab aficionado. He bought three in the ’60s alone, each more refined than the last, but all quintessential Saabs. He is one of the stalwarts who, in return for the Saab experience, measured and poured their own mixture of oil and gas into three-cylinder, two-stroke, smoky engines that rumbled like gravel in a metal bucket. He raced his first Saab 93 on the frozen lakes of New Hampshire and profited from its rare front-wheel drivetrain. In later years he graduated to a ‘95 wagon (with a more civil four-stroke engine) and later the Sonnet sports car. As Saab brand values were compromised over the past 15 years, he’s reluctantly abandoned the brand.
Born in Scandinavia, it is no wonder that the further north one ventures, the more Saabs one sees on the road. More than 20 years ago I cruised over countless Vermont back roads in my own first car, a silver-blue 1986 Saab 900 Turbo and felt part of a small community of mountain-loving individualists. The car accelerated deliberately from a standing start, but as it hit third gear the turbo charger engaged, slamming me back in the cockpit. Tight in the steering, it swooped through mountain curves and never faltered in the Vermont snow.
The aviation engineers at Saab had a very different way of thinking about cars. Their early designs were an antidote for the bourgeois design sensibility propagated by the Detroit marketing machine. And the latest concept cars, stalled in Swedish design studios, show a contemporary evolution of that singular aesthetic.
This is totally unscientific, but I think Saab was the brand of choice for more designers, writers, artists, and nonconformists than any other automobile. It seems every architect I know had a Saab at some time or other. On the road we were members of a cult and flashed our highs and winked as we purred by each other. Designers everywhere will surely lament the demise of this iconic creation.
Saab was the first “Smart Car.” For many years Saabs were marketed as “The Most Intelligent Car Ever Built.” And the aircraft designers did think different. Beginning with their mental model of drivers as pilots, they dubbed Saab interiors as cockpits. They incorporated dramatic aerodynamic principles into form factors. Considering Swedish environmental conditions, they engineered the first mass-produced, front-wheel drive. Lovers of g-force, they introduced the first mass-produced turbo-charged engine. Wary of crashes, they were a passenger-safety leader. And accustomed to very little in the way of constraints on turns, dives, and rolls, they focused more on handling than acceleration.
But typical of engineers, Saab never exhibited a genius for telling their own story—or even recognizing the plot. Saab historically eschewed crass commercialism and never claimed to be a badge brand. But they haven’t done the “indie thing” as well as Subaru. They seemed to draft in the safety promise of Volvo but never claimed it for themselves. They couldn’t connect the dots between the jet-engine expertise and a superior passenger-car experience. They missed the boat on leveraging their one-of-a-kind styling, their Swedish provenance, their odd name (that conjures tears now more than ever) and all the other singular parts of the brand and experience.
Legend has it that more than 50 percent of prospective buyers who test-drove a Saab bought one. But today they can’t win over a critical mass of buyers. According to published results, only 371 Saabs were sold in the United States in November. Compare that with 18,500 Lexus vehicles sold in the same month and the severities of the consumer disconnect comes into sharp relief. Obviously, Saab no longer attracts buyers to the showroom. It appears the Volkswagen Beetle, the Smart Car, or the Cooper Mini fills the market for a low-volume, quirky brand.
As I type, the Swedish government is scrambling squadrons of financial engineers to rescue this brand. To be successful, the new owners of Saab must answer mission-critical questions. “What exactly would the world lose if Saab goes away tomorrow? We know what Saab does, but why does it do it?”
If the rebirth of the MG, Mini, and Lotus demonstrate anything, it’s that this brand can reemerge as relevant and credible with the right brand strategy. But if it is ever to rise above today’s wreckage, it must define a brand purpose. This brand needs to reconnect with its Swedish heritage. It must stand for intelligent design. It must embrace environmental values, use recyclable materials, introduce hybrid models, and adopt sustainable practices. Become a green Saab. Get smart again.
