Not So Good News for Saab Entry-Level Car
By Michelle Krebs April 9, 2010Saab Cars now is under the ownership of Dutch supercar maker Spyker Cars NV, but Saab's 
ties to longtime owner General Motors Co. look like they're going to run deeper -- and longer -- than any near-term product-development impact Spyker will provide.
Britain's AutoCar reports this week that the next generation of Saab's entry-level 9-3, due in 2012, will continue to be based on the current 9-3's GM-developed compact front-wheel-drive platform known as Epsilon. It's an architecture that's already been used for the 9-3 since 2002 and started development well more than a decade ago.
It was believed Saab's new-age 9-3 might ride on the much more contemporary GM-derived global small-car architecture often called Delta, a front-drive platform that underpins the upcoming Chevrolet Cruze and Opel's Astra in Europe and is expected to be used for a variety of Chevrolet and Buick variants, possibly even a small Cadillac.
The news probably shouldn't come as a surprise, however, as Saab product development under GM ownership had stagnated in recent years, meaning it was unlikely much -- if any -- investment had been made in migrating the 9-3 to the Delta architecture. It also was reported that Spyker-owned Saab got all the intellectual property accompanying the Epsilon platform, which does have positive cost implications as Saab refines and re-engineers the platform for the new 9-3 coming in 2012.
There may likely be manufacturing implications as well. Saab's sole factory in Trollhattan, Sweden, already is tooled to build the Epsilon-based 9-3, but to build a 9-3 on the new Delta platform would have required prior planning with GM and an agreement to build the 9-3 in a GM facility tooled to produce cars using the Delta underpinnings. -- Bill Visnic, Senior Editor
Photo by Saab
Saab 9-3
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