Not so long ago, there were two Swedish car manufacturers. One was niche, the other even more so. Volvo and Saab: Scandinavian sensibilities and a sense of duty that few other manufacturers have ever matched.
Perhaps we have Sweden as a country to thank for the existence of both. Sweden is full of both trees and sometimes snow. Cars don’t drive particularly well in the snow and losing control on snow surrounded by millions of trees is a recipe for crashing.
As a result, both Volvo and Saab both swore a commitment to safety that was almost fanatical. It feels that engineers were personally affected by their drive for safety, almost as if they had seen colleagues hurt or killed when driving cars from other brands.
So both brands made earnest cars, not purely engineering or financial products but as vehicles created to make lives better, and to ensure that – in the awful event of having a large collision – the occupants would, more often than not, still be alive. Their car may have been destroyed but they would be okay.
Unfortunately, the world is not always driven by such idealism, and as such we only now have one Swedish car manufacturer (I am including Polestar as an arm of Volvo for convenience).
We lost Saab seven years ago, and it is truly a shame. After a particularly protracted death, that began when GM offloaded Saab only ten years after acquiring it, Saab has been consigned to the history books.
What makes this particularly hurtful is that Saab made unique cars. They were earnest cars made for earnest people – they were more about engineering and thoughtfulness than almost any other brand. Yes, the Germans are capable of some truly stunning engineering, but the Swedes were so often innovators, even when their comparably smaller customer bases would mean these innovations never did make the huge impact they might have had they come from BMW, Audi or Mercedes.
Before it made cars, Saab was an aerospace company, and this was something the brand was particularly proud of. Any tangible link, no matter how small, between the fighter jets it supplied to the Swedish armed forces, and the cars that left the factory at Trollhattan was celebrated, and Saab’s marketing guff was loaded to the gills with ‘born from jets’ or some other similar sentiment.
Saab cultivated, well, a cult. Unfortunately, this did not lead to massive sales, and this landed the brand in the sights of General Motors. GM lacks a real premium brand, and as such Saab was forced to lose its premium image, or at least its premium place in the market, and platform and component sharing with far less interesting cars (I’m looking at you Vauxhall/Opel Vectra) became commonplace.
From this point, every hard-earned innovation had to be passed around to each of GM’s brands often at the lowest possible price and the quality suffered. This parts sharing, although a sound economic practice, hurt Saab as its cars lacked that extra bit of charm or spark that made them so unique. Yes, they often had bespoke chassis or bodies (often to the exasperation of GM accountants) but the inability to sell Saabs for a premium price meant the brand was stuck on a downward spiral as finances looked ever more grim.
GM sold up, and Saab was sort of purchased by a few other brands, but nothing stuck and in 2016 the brand ceased. Saab was dead. Saab was no ordinary car manufacturer, and to illustrate it wasn’t some half-house small-fry, these are some of the safety innovations that those clever Swedes came up with: pollen filters to ensure cleaner air inside the car than outside in 1978; split side mirrors for increased driver spatial awareness in 1981; direct-injection in 1985, and in 2000, a variable-compression ratio engine, which is still considered fairly new to the market even in 2023.
Even those unique Saab quirks had thoughtful and pragmatic intentions behind them. For example, the ignition on all Saabs after 1969 is by the gear selector. For most people, this is a pain – it’s not a logical place and if you own multiple cars, this seems like some glaring emission of common sense from the designers. But once again, this was Saab looking out for you; this was Saab playing a game that is much bigger than you or I; this was Saab acting people’s best interest in mind.
The ignition by the gear lever a Swedish quirk? Not a quirk, it was done instead to reduce significant permanent knee injuries during car crashes caused when driver’s knees had previously collided with car keys in the dashboard.
I think the best way of remembering Saab is to look to one of its marketing taglines from the 1990s:
“A Saab will surrender its own life to save yours”
Whilst Saab is no more, Volvo does still exist and it exists because it was given the means to be what Volvo wanted to be. After struggling in the early 2000s as a member of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group, it seemed Volvo was destined to follow Saab into the void. However, in 2010 Volvo was acquired by Chinese firm Geely and has never looked back.
In one of the most fruitful automotive acquisitions in recent memory, Geely and Volvo reached some sort of miraculous trust-based arrangement. Geely would pony up the cash and Volvo was trusted to do its own thing. Volvo is owned entirely by Geely, but it has autonomy over its resources.
From this, we’ve had another golden age of Volvo. Unique, bespoke designs and architecture with a premium price and brand image have seen Volvo’s global sales consistently grow. Now the brand has committed to an all-electric future, and as one of the forerunners in EV and alternative fuels, Volvo seems destined to be with us for a long, long time.
Volvo’s commitment to occupant safety remains outstanding and through its championing of this mentality, Saab’s and the Swedish way of putting people first continues.
Kerbside 