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Its got conventional beauty, probably more than the current model, but:
Couldn't the exterior of this car have been designed with one of those 'morph' programs? My main beef's not that the car is a visual and substantive departure from the existing model and its predecessors. A new starting point is fine. My problem is that it breaks no new ground. It looks like the result of a union between a Jetta and an S40, both of which did themselves break some design ground when they first debuted. Compare the new 9-3 to the 1994 redesign, which while a source of irritation to some C900 owners, was clearly not going to be mistaken for any other car. While the new 9-3 probably required more creativity from a design standpoint than, say the ostensibly cooler & more distinctive new Thunderbird, (simply because of Saab's averred blank sheet of paper approach) it bears none of the personality of that car. This is principally because the new 9-3 appears to have been designed by committee, where the T-chicken appears to be the brainchild of a solitary, if horrifically nostalgic "visionary." (Not that it actually was designed that way, but rather than it appears to have been designed that way). I can practically visualize the 9-3 redesign meetings going along the lines of those Budget rent-a-car commercials. (Ironically, outfits such as Budget are teeming with cars that appear to have been designed in precisely this fashion.)
Can any of us say that we'd recognize it as a totally new Saab instead of some other marque's redesign or new trim level (think Grand Am "Euro"), but for the name on the decklid? Couldn't it just as plausibly have come from just about anyone who sells in the $28,000 neighborhood and is hoping to snare sticker shocked 3 series customers?
That said, the interior looks promising, (couldn't they have let the cup-designer car try his hand at the exterior?), and I'm sure to go for a test drive. After all, if it can accellerate and brake like a Saab, get good mileage like a Saab, carry plenty of crap like a Saab, and take lots of abuse like a Saab, then maybe it's a Saab. In that is the case, I'll just have to get used to a lack of distinctiveness and hatch-versatility, and compare it straight against comparable offerings from other marques without awarding vague extra points for "Saabness".
By the by: anyone know if they're going to produce an upmarket version of the Toyota Matrix? Who set forth the industry-wide mandate that clever hatch designs have to be economy cars? Grownup gearheads can like a hatchback just as well as the idealistic gas-money-hording dorm-dwellers to whom the sub-$20K hatches are generally marketed.
<end of rant>
posted by 216.136.8...
, Tue, 14 May 2002 18:21:18
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