Saab City

I dropped my 2000 9–3 off at the Fram­ing­ham Saab today for its 30,000 mile major ser­vice, and was promised a “loan­er” car. Great!, I thought… what a per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to check out the new 2005 mod­el, or maybe the new 9–2X, which is basi­cal­ly a fan­cied up Sub­aru? Right?

Wrong. I was hand­ed the keys to a Pur­ple Kia by an Enter­prise Rep — auto­mat­ic trans­mis­sion, no CD play­er… (I would­n’t have cho­sen this car, were I actu­al­ly pay­ing to rent it)

Swedish car own­ers are a spe­cial­ty niche group, (and a very loy­al one), much like Apple com­put­er users. When some­one buys a Saab, they are buy­ing into a brand that is dis­tinct from oth­er car man­u­fac­tur­ers, (and they pay a pre­mi­um for that right).

When you step into a Saab or Vol­vo deal­er­ship, the first thing you notice is the mod­ern, Scan­di­na­vian-style design. The woods are maple, the glass is curved, and the chairs look like they would cost $5000 at DWR.

So, if Brand is so impor­tant to Saab and its cus­tomers, why would they have such crap­py loan­ers? I can’t imag­ine tak­ing my Power­book in for ser­vice, and being hand­ed an eMa­chines pc for tem­po­rary use…

Anoth­er side note: this deal­er sends me junk mail offers twice a month, ask­ing if I’d like to upgrade to a lat­er mod­el. WTF?