sweet freakin' jesus, things are a bit tense over at the saab fanboy wanksite saabsunited; i've been checking in there for a little while looking for any news about the status of the saab company. the saabsunited folks are quite cheezed off that general motors (generous motors; goverment motors) will not let saab be bought out or invested or something something something enough to keep it operating--or start it operating again--with the gm cars and technology until they get some other products into the market. now, that could be many years, so gm is worried about the chinese stealing their shit. except, they can't be worried about that. the saab 9-3 is 10 years old, so who cares if the chinese steal it. the new generation 9-5 was designed almost a decade ago as well and went into production after all the gm equivalents except the cadillac xts, which is seriously ugly and tacky-looking compared to the 9-5 and buick lacrosse.
no, what i think gm is worried about is saab being able to interfere with the gm plan to make buick into saab in north america. with the regal and lacrosse, buick could be close to getting performance/luxury front drive turbocharged cars right. the regal with the new turbo is a great start; a lacrosse with that high-output 4-cylinder turbo engine along with a proper manual transmission, all-wheel drive and sport suspension would be a sick piece of euro crap from right here in america. gm wants to sell buicks as the new saab and is not at all interested in having actual saabs out there at all. it's a weird play considering how badly they fucked up the plan with pontiac and the g8. gm was one rear-wheel-drive 3-series killer away from making pontiac the most interesting american car brand ever, so i can't believe they'll get this plan right either. if they couldn't see how the g8 could take bloody chunks from the 5-series bmw along with the need for a smaller, 3-series-like all new g6, well, they're fucking morons.
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