Saab History

Photo Credit: Saab History

Here is the first of the reviews from the media who recently got the chance to test drive the 2008 Saab 9-3 Turbo-X just North of Boston, Massachusetts.

My colleague and longtime friend Carl Levine, the engineer behind the Audio Troll (Saab + Ipod), had the thrill to experience the Turbo-X first hand and here is his review below!

You can’t spell sex without the X… 2008.5 Saab Turbo-X

By Carl Levine

As the sun glared through my bedroom window that fateful Tuesday morning, I had no idea of what my day would hold. You see, up until this aforementioned Tuesday I was staunchly opposed to the idea of a Saab needing all-wheel drive. I grew up in an age where I got to watch all-wheel drive take the market by storm in quirky Japanese cars like the Mitsubishi Eclipse and the Subaru Loyale, or overhyped in some sterile, boxy Audi products.

There’s a lot to love about all-wheel drive, but its not without its disadvantages. True, there will always be a deficit in fuel economy with a PTO Unit attached to the end of the gearbox, feeding the opposing wheels with power on demand. As far as I was concerned, all-wheel drive was merely a “gateway drug” to move people into SUVs. All wheel drive seemed almost like a false sense of security, especially in a car that wouldn’t have necessarily handled all that well in the first place without it.

Back in the mists of time, about 7 years ago if you want to get specific, I sold Saabs. The 9-5 and 9-3 were the bread and butter, they paid my paycheck, were front-wheel drive and kicked ass in the snow. Time after time, I would have to talk customers out of the Audi A4 or Volvo XC70… the fuel economy sucks, there’s more stuff to break, you might as well call it “All Wheel Slide” because it isn’t going to do jack shit for you if you have ventured into danger… whatever it took to talk the people out of it and into the tried-and-true superiority of the front-wheel drive, efficient and powerful Saab, right?

So fast-forward to a couple of years ago, when a team from Saab and a team from Haldex got together and decided to tack an all-wheel drive system onto the Epsilon chassis; the 9-3 Sport Sedan. Saab may not always be first to the game with this sort of stuff, but you know that when they do end up following the pack, they do it right. What resulted from this partnership is Saab’s new Cross-Wheel-Drive system (XWD) - an intelligent, electronically controlled all-wheel drive system that uses the 9-3’s already advanced controller area network (CAN) to interface the new Haldex ECU on the rear drive module to the rest of the car’s systems. This is kind of a big deal if you consider how other manufacturers have grafted AWD onto their own products.

I rolled up at the test site in North Andover, MA with my two-liters of fury, the 2.0 with the big T. This was the first time in all the time I’ve been involved with Saab that I was in the same generation car as the “all-new” car I was going to thrash on the test course. The time of reckoning had come. After meeting a few of the folks from Saab, we listened to a presentation by an engineer from Saab named Tommy. Tommy is one of the chief engineers on the XWD project and as soon as he said “when you get to the slalom, roll up at 25 in 2nd, punch the gas and hold it there till you’re out”, I knew this was going to be nothing less than stellar.

The test course was simple. In front of the tent there was a pit lane adjacent to a straight-away. Just after the pit lane were three cones in a group to signify the start of the slalom. Drivers had the opportunity to circumvent the slalom to build greater speed for the first corner, a sweeping 90-degree left into another straight. The next corner was a 120-degree left, covered in a great deal of sand to simulate a low-traction situation. Exiting that turn, the course made a few zig-zags and then went into another straight before another 90-degree left to return to the pit lane.

I wasted no time in getting behind the wheel of the SportCombi variant with the 6-speed manual gearbox. With our editor Seth as my co-pilot, I rolled out of the pit lane in first, matted the go pedal, ripped to 25mph as instructed, clicked into 2nd and floored it. The car stayed glued to the path as my speed increased proportionally with the smile on my face. I whipped the Turbo-X through the sweeping 90-degree left without a care, I knew what was going to happen — and it did. The car shifted its power around to the wheels in a chorus of blistering rubber and a blissfully ethereal exhaust note. Without hesitation, the car blasted back up to 60mph before the next turn. As I entered the turn with the sand, the real magic could be felt. Tommy told us that the threshold of the electronic stability program (ESP) had been raised considerably to allow XWD to work its magic. To feel one side of the car accelerating and the other side braking was a crazy feeling, but soon forgotten as I started to weave through the kinks in the track. As the engine emitted a chorus of forced induction and exhaust that was akin to Barry White with a mouth full of bees, I flew through the final straight before turning into the pit lane to let the next person go.

A cold shower was not available after that happy little romp, so I ventured over to the vintage cars that were on hand for test drives. I climbed into the 1986 9000 Turbo, car number 3 from the Long Run at Talladega. Hey, remember turbo lag? Neither did I until I climbed into the unholy step-child of Saab and Fiat with its shifter that felt like it was connected to a rubber band ball underneath. I had my way with that car, and the rest that were on hand before I got bored and needed a new adventure. People were not so hot on making clouds of brake dust and molten z-rated tire, it seemed, so I took a few more bombing runs in the Turbo-X before deciding to take one out on the local roads.

Being from the area, I knew a few good shortcuts and sweeping on-ramps to try out. The Turbo-X is a fantastic car on the road, plenty of power and a true feeling of control over the road. Getting onto the highway, the car pushed happily into triple digits and executed lane changes with aplomb. As I exited the highway to return to the test site, I spotted a dead creature in the road. I was doing about 75mph, gripping the road with what felt like the clamping force of a 20-ton press — I flicked the wheel left, then right, returning to my original trajectory as if nothing had happened.

Returning to the test track, I watched the cars zip around the track at speeds I’ve never seen a Saab achieve so quickly in stock form. I took a couple more runs and called it a day.

So here’s my take on the whole thing: The Turbo-X is nothing short of amazing in terms of handling, acceleration, material quality and pure sex. The car is gorgeous inside and out, and it even greets you with an “All Systems Go!” when you fire it up. The bad? Fuel economy. Back to my original statement about the gas-guzzling nature of a vehicle that is powering four wheels instead of two. With the cost of gas rising each day, how economical can a car be that gets 15mpg in the city on a good day? Audis are worse, and as sterile as a Munich post office. Subarus are still chintzy and have a really sickly sounding motor right off the lot. The Saab Turbo-X is a fine choice despite the mileage. I suppose if you can drop the $42-large on one of these Super-Swedes, gassing the thing up every few days won’t make you shed a tear… I mean, unless you’re crying from happiness from the handling. I was.