Date: 5 Oct 2002 21:27:48 GMT From: davehinznopsamcop.net Subject: Re: Saab commitment to USA
Someone who looks an awful lot like American Resolve <American_Resolve_USAnopsamail.com> wrote: > Are Saabs made in the U S of A? Nope. Either was my mom's Chevy, or my dad's Ford. > How reliable is a Saab compared to a Saturn? Well, Saturns are pretty new yet, so it's kind of early to know if they'll show the same kind of longevity as the Saabs. Looks promising though; it was my second choice of brands this last time, in fact I bought my Saab 9-5 (3 year lease trade-in) from the Saturn dealership. > From what I heard the > Saabs have engine blocks that are combined engine + transaxle I'm not sure what this means - they're separate mechanisms, not like they're a single casting or something - can you clarify your question? > and the > engines are put in backwards. The 99 and 900 models have the clutch in the front of the engine, which makes servicing the clutch much, much easier (afternoon job easily). There were other reasons for that placement, but it certainly improves servicability. > Are they more difficult to service than > a Saturn? I've never serviced a Saturn, but keep in mind that Saab has only a few models, which means that they can pay attention to that sort of thing. Instead of using the same engine for a bunch of different models, they are able to arrange things so that they can be reached easily. All of the owner-level items are logically arranged and easy to get to, and the heavy-duty repairs also point out that quite a bit of attention has been given to this aspect of the car's engineering. > Are they as reliable as Saturns, both of them owned by GM > and all... Well, GM has (for the most part) stayed out of the design and engineering decisions, so they haven't really hurt the quality of the cars. As far as longevity, it's not at all unusual to have a Saab go well over 200,000 miles - many go much, much further than that. I don't know how that compares to Saturn, but again, they're a fairly new make. Dave Hinz