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I have taken up John A.'s challenge to take the writer of the Forbes Viggen test to task about his article. To be perfectly honest, my beef was more his approach in general, rather than his specific remarks about the car. I include below my correspondence to date with Mr. Frank. I did notice his credentials include such fine bastions of automotive reporting and knowledge as Esquire and National Geographic Adventure.
Michael,
Thank you for your reply. My serious issues with your report on the Viggen and your approach in general to car testing/reporting… To be perfectly honest, I think you were very clear in your praise of the items you liked, so I’m not suggesting that you were completely unfair to the car. I, along with most reasonable minded people, agree that the car has a torque steer issue, though I believe it is blown out of proportion by the media (both automotive and otherwise). Most of the people who own these cars do not consider it to be very significant. But I am not suggesting that, as a reporter, you should write anything that is not correct. Which brings me to the items I do have a genuine issue with.
‘Viggen’ is Swedish for ‘Thunderbolt’, and was used to name a car because of the Fighter Jet produced by SAAB under the same name. I do not know if ‘pumped up’ was intended to be humorous, but it certainly led to the omission of a point that would most likely have been of interest to many of your readers. The caliber of instructors at the Viggen Flight Academy is extremely high, including drivers who have raced at the highest levels of racing, and for the buyer who chooses to avail of the opportunity, it is something that is worth well in excess of $1,000. Have you looked into the cost of Advanced Driver’s Schools lately? Everybody who has been on this course says it is not to be missed.
I do not recall seeing the excellent safety attributes of the Viggen mentioned anywhere in the article, but I may be wrong on that.
You mention that the car dates to the mid 1990s, it actually can be traced back to the Opel Vectra of 1988. You entirely neglect to mention the issue of platform sharing, which as keen watchers of the Financial Markets, I think your readers would also have been very interested in. SAAB were in the process of designing a replacement for the ‘Classic’ 900 model when 50% of the company was bought by GM. The gentlemen in Detroit put a stop to the process and decreed that the new 900 should utilize as much of the Opel Vectra as possible to reduce costs. This has had many repercussions, which have dogged the New Generation 900 / 9-3 model throughout it’s life. Firstly, the car debuted a year or so later than was originally intended. Secondly, in spite of this delay, the car was rushed through the development process, and significant enough attention was not paid to certain items. (Chassis being one.) Obviously, the biggest compromise of all was having to use humble Vectra underpinnings, and knowing that car, I think the engineers at Trollhatten did a respectable job with the resources available to them. I would suspect that many of your readers are GM stockholders, and in my honest opinion, I think it would be worth pointing out to them that most of what is wrong with the Viggen can be attributed to Detroit.
The thing about your report that is most concerning to me is, however, what I believe is your misconception of what this car is supposed to be about. The Viggen is supposed to be a wild, live on the edge performance car. Your included competitors include the BMW 330i, which will cost significantly more with a similar specification, and cannot under any stretch of the imagination be regarded as having comparable real-world performance as the Viggen. 0-60 yes, but most of us are aware that is just an arbitrary test arrived at to make some comparisons. Since the advent of 0-60 tests, the world has come to realize that in-gear, mid-range performance is what most of us can use in real world driving situations. Over a decade ago, when SAAB first introduced the 9000 Carlsson model, the British Automotive Press hailed it as revelation for people who had to drive a car that could carry four or five occupants. In-gear acceleration was in the supercar league! They mentioned mid-range performance comparable to Porsche 911, Ferrari and Lamborghini. This was, and still is, a SAAB hallmark. Personally, I would regard the M3 as being more comparable to the Viggen than the 330i is. I’m not suggesting for a second that to the vast majority of buyers a BMW M3 will be anything other than overwhelmingly more appealing than the SAAB Viggen, but I think the M3 and Viggen are closer in spirit than the 330i and Viggen are. The Viggen will definitely appeal to anybody who does not want to have the 237th M3 at their Country Club. You even include the Audi A6 2.8 as an alternative! That is the part of the report, more than any other, that prompted me to write to you. How in all reality can you view/propose the Audi A6 2.8 as a competitor to the SAAB Viggen? The cars are chalk and cheese. The SAAB is a live on the edge performance car, the Audi is a heavy, underpowered land-yacht. About the only things they have in common is that they are both European and both have sticker prices in the neighborhood of $38,000. Take away ‘European’, and you may as well include the Lincoln Town Car as a competitor! At that point I honestly started to wonder about what you knew about cars. Lexus GS 300? Lexus IS maybe…
Maybe I am the one missing the point. I thought including a road test in a magazine was intended to be informative, which I believe your article was to an extent, but I think it was also significantly mis-informative. For a long time I have questioned the inclusion of automotive reporting and road tests in non-automotive publications. I realize that for Magazines such as GQ, Women’s magazines or magazines covering specialist activities such as outdoor pursuits cars are not a core interest of the intended reader, and they will not want the same things in a car as I will. However, even if a car is just an appliance, a lifestyle accessory, or anything else, to the reader, I believe they deserve to get correct information. I don’t feel sympathy for a reader who was considering a high performance car, and instead ends up with an Audi A6 2.8! (sorry, I just cannot help laughing at that one!) . If they are foolish enough to make that mistake, then they are beyond sympathy in my opinion. Audi A6 2.7 Turbo may be a different story, though still significantly different from a Viggen, it is at least capable of impressive performance. Why did you not include the Audi S4 as an alternative? I appreciate your genuine desire to do the best job possible for your readers, however if Forbes wants to include cars as subject matter for its’ magazine, I think it should be doing a better job than it did on this article. Personally, I don’t go to a finance magazine for car advice. To their credit, car magazines don’t generally offer financial advice, unless specifically related to the cars they are writing about. I fear that financial publications are using automotive (and other) articles as a way to add a little spice and entertainment value to what is, for most people, not a very exciting subject (now that the Bull has run out of the gate). Everything in our lives has a financial impact (even Spirituality), so it is not difficult to rationalize inclusion of practically anything in a money magazine. The type of coverage cars get in non-car magazines does lead me to conclude that they are merely added to provide some diversion. Most readers would be outraged if a few pornographic shots were included. OK, so we can’t do porn, what else can be interesting to most people and be entertaining at the same time? Cars, that’s it… let’s write about cars.
Sincerely,
John McCarthy.
-----Original Message-----
From: Frank, Michael [SMTP:mfrank@forbes.net]
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2001 10:30 AM
To: jmccarthy
Subject: RE: Viggen Test
Why don't you explain what you mean by "serious issue" and "my
approach". As for the results, I suppose you also take serious issue
with Road and Track and Car and Driver as well then, since both have
reported recently on their great dislike of the 9-3's dreaded torque
steer. Would you still have problems with our approach if we rated the
Viggen more highly? I wonder; recently we included the 9-5 Aero Wagon as
one of our winning Pump Busters
http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/28/0528feat_10.html, and somehow the
Saab-lovers didn't come out of the woodwork to slam our reviewing
techniques.
Saabs aside, please explain what you take as our shortcomings. I am
quite honestly interested, as it is our intention to do the best job we
possibly can.
Sincerely,
Michael Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: jmccarthy [mailto:jmccarthy@jm-a.com]
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2001 10:12 AM
To: Frank, Michael
Subject: Viggen Test
Michael,
I take serious issue with your report of the Viggen, and your approach
to
car testing in general. In all sincerity, I believe that if Forbes wants
to
write about cars, it should do so with the responsibility is does with
it's
'core' subjects. I know many of my fellow users of the Saabnet.com
Bulletin
Board Share these sentiments.
Respectfully,
John McCarthy.
http://www.forbes.com/2001/06/11/0611test.html
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