Swiss Saab 9-5 pricing is available here.

Again, not all these models are available immediately. It seems many variations will be held over until MY2011.

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As mentioned yesterday, it's my understanding that full production of new vehicles at the Saab plant in Trollhattan is scheduled to begin on March 22. That's from speaking with people at Saab.

There's a lot to do to prepare the factory for that, however, and it seems work is well underway.

From Swedish Radio

The work in the body shop at Saab in Trollhättan is in full swing and later in the spring it may be necessary to recruit more people, says the prospective club chairman Håkan Skött on IF Metall's homepage.

- It is good that we are finally running again, says Håkan Skött on the website. The break has been long and there will be a special restart, with everything starting from scratch. We need to get started and fill all the feeds again.

There is a slight concern that all the material will not arrive in time, but the company does everything it can solve all such problems.

According to Håkan Skött, Saab is going to produce about 100 cars per day. But it is still going to be 28-speed which means 28 cars produced per hour, so the production stops during the day for not producing too many cars.

- In week 16 we will start with 28-speed, which is what we are manned to cope with. [translator's note: probably this means full 28-speed since it was 28-speed before too.]

The company's plans is based on that it will increase the production speed at more than one occasion during the year. Today Håkan Skött does not want to say when it might happen, only that it will be "later on".

- But I can say that at first we probably will have the greatest recruitment needs in the body shop, so it is likely that the first recruitments will be there, when the time comes.

Thanks to Johan for the translation!

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There's a good story about Subaru and customer loyalty at USA Today.

Comparisons between Saab and Subaru are not new and it seems Suuby definitely have a similar clientele, with similar loyalty levels.

Of course, Subaru also have actual sales, which is what Saab are going to have to regain.

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Volvos are not the safest cars in the world.

That's the conclusion of a Swedish court in a case bought against Volvo by ...... wait for it.....

.......Toyota!

Volvo ran some ads in 2009 claiming that their XC60 was the safest car in the world but in Sweden, you've got to be able to verify any claims you make in advertising and the judge concluded that Volvo couldn't adequately back that up.

Toyota couldn't back it up, either, but they could drive it forward relentlessly........

One of our regular readers here, Marc S, had an unfortunate encounter on Wednesday this week.

I'll let him tell the story:

I wanted to let you know that I had Wednesday afternoon at around 13h45 a quite massive car accident here in Luxembourg with my 2003 Saab 93 Aero 2.0T.

A Mercedes hit me nearly frontal because the German driver thought that he was on a double-lane road which he definitely was not as I was driving on the other one.

As you can see from the pictures the impact was quite heavy, and the cars are apparently scrap as they both have a bend on the roof. But the most important thing is that we both are perfectly OK and not badly injured. I have only some minor burnings on my right hand from the airbag explosion and that was it.

The police stated that we were really really lucky running with such secure cars. By the way, my engine was still running and the radio still played J

PS: the only misery is that I wanted to keep my Saab until the new 95 SW is out and now I have to look for a car to bridge that time...

I'm sure you'll all agree that it's great news Marc is OK. The other driver as well. Such big accidents don't always end so well, even in cars as safe as Saab and Mercedes Benz.

I hope a new vehicle comes your way soon, Marc.

This will throw the cat amongst the pigeons. Not because of the prices, necessarily, but because of the model range that's mentioned in the brochure.

From Djup Strupe. Click to enlarge.

Wow.

TTiD, BioPower and the 1.6 litre.

Methinks the German market is being pursued quite aggressively. A good thing, but I'd be fascinated to know why some of these configurations haven't been mentioned in literature we've seen for the Swedish market.

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UPDATE - The fine print. Indeed, the models above with asterisks are for the 2011 model year so it's probably fair to assume they'll be made available for other European markets as well at that time.

Click to enlarge:

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The colors list looks the same, with 'Oak' noted as a 2011 color.

There's a lot happening this month for Saab.

Of course, there's already been the Geneva Motor Show and Erik Carlsson's birthday this month, but that's just the start of things.

Earlier this week, Victor Muller had his first days on the ground in Trollhattan, actually working at the Saab Factory as the new head of the company.

I've heard from one guy this week saying that today, March 12, will be the last day for Saab USA being housed at GM's headquarters, the Renaissance Center in Detroit. I've not heard anything different, so I assume they're still moving to Royal Oak, MI, as planned.

Production will re-commence at Saab's Trollhattan plant on March 22nd. That's going to be a big day!

The very next day there will be a Dealer meeting in the UK and it's my understanding that pricing and ordering for the new Saab 9-5 will be available either that day or the next.

On March 29th and 30th there will be a US National Dealer meeting. No word if pricing for that US will be made available then, but it might be reasonable to think so.

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And on an unofficial level, there will be a Saab 900 owners gathering in Paris, France.

Get the details over at Etienne's Saab blog.

Saab Sweden have now placed the new Saab 9-5 product brochure online.

As mentioned earlier, the information posted both here and at Auto Motor and Sport was preliminary information and incomplete. This new brochure has more model pricing, as well as the full list of options available with the car.

As Rune's pointed out in comments, there's no BioPower model listing, which is a surprise as I drove a BioPower model when I was in Sweden in September last year. I'll fire off a question.

The price list is reproduced below (click to enlarge). You can download the full PDF here (right click, save as)

Thanks to Patrik for the tip, via comments.

Received via email today.....

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Hello,

My name is Ben Timmins and I am a student at the Boston University College of Communication. I'm writing about the recent purchase of Saab by Spyker and wanted to talk to you (and the commenters) about this.

I noticed that you helped a student from the US last year at the old Trollhattan Saab website, so I thought this is worth a shot. I've posted a couple of questions for you and the commenters. Here's hoping that Saab enthusiasts are opinionated people (I've been reading this site for a little while...I know you are)

1. I've talked to a couple of dealers that weren't exactly happy with the time spent with Saab and GM, but no one really said why. What was the issue with GM?
2. I'm focusing in on the relationship between New England and Saab, which many people have alluded to in my research. What is it, then, with Saab and New England? Is it because Saab was located in Connecticut for so many years or is there a demographic match?
3. Who, then, is the Saab owner? What makes him/her unique?
4. Jamie Kitman of Automobile Magazine recently said that Saab's uphill battle post-Spyker is gaining back customers who had fled the brand during the GM years. What does Saab have to do to get these people back? What does it have to do to help the enthusiasts?

My deadline is pretty soon so anything you can do is great. As always, thanks so much.

The Saab 9-5 prices that I published a few days ago were taken from a PDF brochure that I received from Djup Strupe, via email.

I lifted only certain parts of that brochure for publication here as I figured a) they were the ones that would be of most interest, and b) the info was preliminary, so the less the better.

It seems my mates over at AMS have similar contacts as they've published some more of this info in a story over there, as well as providing a link to the complete PDF brochure (in Swedish).

The brochure lists pricing, as per my post the other day, as well options and packages available. As you can see at the AMS post, it also shows prospective additions to the color palette for 2011.

Please note that it's preliminary information intended for the Swedish market. It may change and it may not be complete.

Given that there's been quite a bit of Saab design conversation here in the last few weeks, there's a timely new article over at Car Design news.

It's a two-page affair covering Saab's design evolution right through from UrSaab to the Aero-X and the influence that concept car will have on Saab's design future.

It's not a huge ground-breaker of an essay and many regulars here will be quite familiar with all the territory it covers. For those who are more recent arrivals to either this site, or the Saab brand as a whole, it will give a useful insight into Saab's evolution over the years.

Click here to check it out.

And a tip..... the link to access the second page isn't at the bottom where the arrow is. You actually have to scroll back to the top of the page and you'll see it there in the top right corner.

Dagens Industri were one of several news services in Sweden that wrote about Saab right throughout 2009 and the early part of 2010 as if the company had some sort of corporate plague.

Everything was bad, bad, bad, dead, dead, dead. It must have really killed these people when the transaction with Spyker actually went through.

Today they've managed to make right Clarksonian cocks of themselves (pardon my Francais) with an article on their site that plain-and-simple infers that the Saab 9-5 costs too much because the top-line model is more expensive than a similar Volvo S80 or 'equivalent' Audi (and what's even more annoying is that they've referenced SU in their article).

They ask "Are customers willing to pay 55,900 kronor for the Saab 9-5 than for equivalent Volvo?" (Googletrans) and then point out a 42,800 SEK difference between the same 9-5 and an Audi (presumably an A6).

Of course, they don't mention that the 9-5 is a brand new car, with brand new technology and handling. They don't mention that the Volvo they're comparing it to is several years old now. And the Audi options list - want wheels to go with your car, sir? - no mention of that, either.

Thankfully, a large number of Swedes have chimed in and given them a good serve in comments to their article. Over 200 of them as I write this.

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So who's going to buy one of these new Saab 9-5's?

Well, this 24-year Mercedes veteran has just gone and bought two of them!!!

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr Daaaaagens Industri.

......Even though Thomas Karlström is used to correct expensive cars, it became love at first sight when he got to see and test drive the new Saab 9-5.

- Sure, I have always known that Saab could build cars. But this was something completely different. Saab has not built anything like this before. The feeling is fantastic - at least in the same class of car with a Mercedes Star in front, "says Thomas Karlström.

He did not confine themselves to a car - he ordered two pieces of the family business.

- I was away and test drove both the BMW and Mercedes new top models. But even though they are very expensive, they can not quite match the 9-5: an. It is simply a fantastic car, "says Thomas Karlström.

One might suggest that DI.se should just stop crapping on and casting aspersions at Saab and simply wait until they can drive the car for themselves and see how good it is. I know that doesn't sell papers, but it might stop them looking like a packet of noodles and give one of their nation's good companies a fighting chance.

Yes, some people will have issues with 9-5 pricing. Somewhere in the world there's someone who has issues with Hyundai pricing, with Dacia pricing. Right now, there's probably someone who can't quite put together enough rupees for a Tata Nano.

There are always people on the fringe of being able to buy and they'll always have issues.

The real question here is whether or not Saab will sell enough of them. I bet they will. Di.se doesn't need to cast aspersions or make poor comparisons in order to ask the same question. They just need to ask it and then ask if the car's impressive enough for people to pay.