SAAB STORY

Cars

Novelist Salman Rushdie hits the streets of San Francisco in the Saab 9000 Turbo

MARK GINSBURG

ince the early 1960s, Saabs have been the cars of choice for American writers, architects, and intellectuals—a somewhat limited market, but one that Saab-Scania, manufacturer also of missiles, aircraft, and satellites, seems now to have expanded, partly through its commitment to a racing program and partly because of the broad appeal of its most recent models. The Saab 900 series is enormously popular, and the 9000 Turbo, which was introduced to the U.S. in the summer of 1986, is also a big success. Every one that is imported is sold. Though it competes with the Sterling 825, the Merkur Scorpio, and the Volvo 700 and Audi 5000 series, it stands apart. The Volvo is too boxy, the Audi too round, the Sterling too Japanese, and the Scorpio too funky, but the Saab seems just right—impeccably proportioned.

The 9000 Turbo is the first completely new Saab body to appear since 1967. "Body" is the key word, since the car's engine and transmission are the same as the ones in the Saab 900 (which costs significantly less, at $20,815 for the five-speed model, versus $26,025 for the five-speed 9000 Turbo). But the 9000 body itself is not unique. Four car companies pooled their resources for a new design from the Turin studio of Giorgio (Maserati, Isuzu, Hyundai) Giugiaro. The result was a bubblelike hatchback tacked onto a fairly conventional four-door sedan. A 9000 driver could pull up next to a Lancia Thema, Fiat Croma, or Alfa Romeo 164 (to be launched next year) and watch any illusions about design exclusivity melt away. Although the other cars are not sold here yet (sadly, because the Thema is the most elegant variant), the 9000 Turbo's origins are worth mentioning because the car is a compromise design from a manufacturer with a heritage of body shapes that have a love-it-or-leave-it appeal.

Many people seem to think, mistakenly, that the porcupine-shaped 900 Turbo is the new Saab model, not the 9000. Though in terms of ride, maintenance, and electronic technology, the latter is a much more modem car, it is less com-

pelling to look at, for the same reason all the new European sedans are a little boring: wind-tunnel testing. Ultramodern tunnels enable stylists to design a car so that it has the lowest possible resistance to the wind on the highway; the vehicle is therefore quicker and uses less gasoline. The 900 Turbo was designed before the almighty tunnel had the last word, and it is refined periodically to keep it looking fresh and to improve its aerodynamics. The latest face-lift provided it with a new front end.

"From a distance one wouldn't necessarily know this is a Saab," remarked Salman Rushdie as we snaked through San Francisco's Lincoln Park toward China Beach in a gray-on-gray 9000 Turbo.

"In a funny way it looks much more conventional than my car." Rushdie was on the West Coast promoting his newest book, The Jaguar Smile (Viking), and had spent several days with the 9000. He was comparing it with the 900 Turbo he drives at home in London, a car he bought as a present to himself after the publication of his second big novel, Shame.

"This car doesn't have anything like the kick of my car," Rushdie added. "I know you say it has the same engine, but I suppose the increased weight of the new body slows it down. The car is very smooth, however. They seem to have concentrated on the ride and not on that huge response. I notice also that it doesn't have that delay before the turbo comes in, after you've put your foot down on the accelerator." Turbocharging, which is simply a method of recycling the engine exhaust for an added surge of power, is often characterized by a slight lag before rapid acceleration. Even though the 9000 Turbo employs a four-cylinder engine, it still has plenty of power reserve—and respectable fuel economy. The turbo makes the 9000 wonderfully practical too. When I used the car, I was able to load it to capacity and still effort-

lessly pass cars on a New York expressway to catch a plane. On another occasion, driving the 9000 Turbo on a narrow strip of mountain road between Bergen and Oslo, bound by a fjord on one side and solid granite on the other, I was able to overtake a truck going uphill, during the split second that the road straightened out. Very few sedans in the world under $30,000 are capable of similar maneuvers.

During more sedate city driving, the 9000 Turbo handles well, though it isn't problem-free. "I have grown somewhat rusty with the use of a manual gearbox, so one must make allowances for that. But I do think it is quite hard to get into first gear. And that one often finds oneself in third gear when one thinks it is first," commented Rushdie. The balky first gear is a 9000 trait that can make driving the five-speed version of the car a burden in heavy traffic. "I greatly prefer the automatic to the stick shift anyway, since most of the driving I do is in town. In London it's a more relaxing and comfortable way of driving, without having to execute five thousand gear shifts a day. The Saab is the first automatic car I owned, so having the automatic is as much of a pleasure as having the Saab," he said.

The 9000 interior is sort of Danish mod—with bold design strokes, such as the great scoops in the doors that form armrests, and a combined dashboard-center console that's shaped like a giant comma. But though it photographs marvelously, it's still more Conran's than Bang and Olufsen, and badly needs at least one small strip of wood. Both the German Ford Scorpio and the British-Japanese Sterling* (9000 rivals) offer natural-wood veneer as standard equipment. Certain amenities that Americans are used to having in a $26,000plus car—a leather gearshift knob and leather-wrapped steering wheel, for instance—are extra-cost options in the 9000. (Vinyl holds up better in the Nordic climate.)

"It's a bossy car, this. A little light comes on telling you when to shift up, if it decides you haven't done so when you should," Rushdie noted. Safety buffs will appreciate the 9000 Turbo. It has red lights in the seat-belt anchors to help passengers buckle up at night, and a thermostat that supplies outside-temperature readings. In Norway this proves invaluable because it warns against freezing temperatures and the resultant icy pavement. The Saab also has a footrest for the driver's left foot, and a tool kit in the rear, complete with gloves to keep hands warm and clean during tire changes. Owners will have to drive the

car thousands of miles before the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of the 9000 can be fully appreciated. Fitted between the front seats is a storage bin that looks suspiciously like the housing for a cellular phone. The lid opens fully to rest against the edge of the rear seat bench and form a tray for backseat passengers. The bin itself is deep and narrow enough to hold a can of soda or a coffee container without its toppling over. And the driver has no excuse to let the car run out of gas, either: the same computer that monitors the ambient temperature measures even more accurately the distance (in miles or kilometers) the car can be driven before the tank runs dry.

The Saab seats make long-distance driving a pleasure. They are practically armchairs, and rear passengers have only slightly less room than those up front. Everyone in this sedan can be comfortable even if a long-legged driver has pushed the seat back to its limit. (Saabs, in fact, are a favored car of tall drivers.) The interior execution has a few weaknesses that potential buyers should know about. The Clarion radio and equalizer, for instance, which are standard in the 9000 series, help to make the Saab the best-sounding luxury car on the road, but unfortunately it takes seventeen buttons, one of them with five separate functions, on the radio-cassette deck alone to get it that way. The equalizer has another seventeen buttons. While Rushdie opted to "set it and forget it" and preset his favorite radio stations, I found myself hooked on achieving concert-hall sound, and at stoplights would fiddle with the controls to bring out the oboes and string sections. Blaring auto horns from behind would bring me back to reality each time. What is essentially a home micro-component system has no place in a vehicle.

On the other hand, the unit is fully protected: it slides out to be tucked away when the car is parked in high-crime areas. Its circuitry is encoded so that it jams when disconnected from the power source. Only the car owner has the code that unjams the signal; stickers provided for the windows inform the would-be thief that the system will be inoperative if stolen, and will therefore have no resale value. (According to Mercedes-Benz, which codes its Becker radios similarly, the radios continue to be stolen anyway.)

An inconvenient design feature is the

power window controls, located way down in front of the storage bin, between the front seats. Their shape is identical to that of the power sunroof button located beside them, which is confusing. Saab has an excellent record of correcting design flaws during production, and one hopes that this inconvenience will be remedied. Rushdie, who lives in a rainy city, also found it extraordinary that Saab does not offer a rear-window wiper on its hatchback cars.

"Well, I wouldn't buy this car, really," Rushdie concluded. "For a start it's a big car. I don't need either an executive car or a large family car. I like the slightly sportier look and response of the 900 Turbo, which also has colossal storage space. The 9000, however, is a car for doing long-distance driving with other people. When I do drive around England or Europe it's either to lecture or do readings, or to go on holiday—and it's usually with one other person at most."

The 9000 Turbo is a car with a great deal of substance in the very crowded $20,000-to-$30,000 market. Its main attributes are its comfort, speed, and cargo space, but buyers who want the somewhat oddball character of previous Saabs in a modem hatchback sedan might look instead to the Merkur Scorpio, built by Ford of Germany and available at Lincoln-Mercury dealers here. Others who prefer an understated vehicle that can rocket down the highway or up a snowy mountain with four people and their luggage will be perfectly happy in a 9000.

MANUFACTURER'S

SPECIFICATIONS:

Saab 9000 Turbo

• Vehicle type: four-door hatchback sedan with front-wheel drive.

• Price: $26,025 (five-speed manual); $26,585 (four-speed automatic).

• Options: leather package and fog lights, $1,030; metallic or black paint, $425.

• Engine type: sixteen-valve, water-cooled turbocharged with intercooler.

• Acceleration 0-60 m.p.h.:

8.5 seconds (manual);

8.8 seconds (automatic).

• Top speed: 141 m.p.h.

• Projected E.PJ\. fuel economy:

21 m.p.g., city;

28 m.p.g., highway (manual);

19 m.p.g., city;

26 m.p.g., highway (automatic).