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My Saab and I have parted ways...
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Posted by Andrej (more from Andrej) on Thu, 1 Nov 2007 19:12:49 Share Post by Email
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After 2.5 years and three trips on the back of a flatbed, my 1999 9-5 SE 2.3lpt automatic have parted ways. I rather enjoyed the car, though in retrospect I think that perhaps it did not suit me quite as well as I thought.

I came to Saab after nine years driving a mid-80s BMW 5 series. Compared to that car, the 9-5 was immeasurably more refined and had far more creature comforts, but I always felt less of a connection between the car and road. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the Saab as my daily driver, and took it upon myself to make sure everything was properly maintained. I did all the obvious stuff - IDM, CPS - that could leave me stranded as preventive maintenance, and made sure all the regular maintenance items were done at very conservative intervals.

Unfortunately, the car did not reward my efforts. The first trip on the hook was the first day I owned it, when the idler pulley disintegrated. No big deal, easily fixed. The second failure was not so simple. The turbo blew in SC, while driving from NY to FL. I had the car repaired (the only work I didn't do myself) and, hassle though it was, I figured it was just bad luck that the turbo (which I knew would fail sooner or later) decided to go at the least opportune moment possible. But the final failure - the one that prompted me to sell the car - surprised me. The transmission began slipping when hot. I had changed the fluid recently, but I figured I'd do it again just to flush out any contaminants that might be causing the problem. The fluid that came out look suspiciously cloudy - a telltale sign of clutch packs going south. The new fluid solved the problem for about 1000 miles. Late one night the transmission gave up the ghost three miles from home. That was it - I started looking for another vehicle the next day.

I ended up buying a 2001 BMW 525i. It reminds me a lot of my old 5. Compared to the Saab, I miss the interior room, the trunk space, the stereo, the smooth and quiet highway ride, and some other nice touches. The BMW is more connected, more direct. I'm happy to be back to a manual transmission and RWD - I didn't realize just how much I missed it. I'm not trying to be critical of the Saab - the BMW and the Saab are two different cars fulfilling two different design objectives.

One of the the main reasons I went back to BMW, though, is the fact that in nine years of ownership, my previous 5 series never once left me stranded. The Saab did it to me three times in two and a half years. Admittedly, one of those was a simple fix, but the others were major repairs. More frustrating, preventive maintenance apparently did nothing to forestall those failures. Had I purchased the car new, perhaps I would have had better luck, but finances dictated that that was not in the cards.

So, my time with Saab has come to an end, at least for now. Thanks to Saabnet, I was able to dive into work on the car easily. Sadly, my efforts were not rewarded with quite as much reliability as I would have liked.

Thanks to all here who contributed to my experience. I hope I was able to contribute something as well. Best of luck to all of you.

posted by 68.198.1...
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