Saab NINES Articles
9-7: Saab’s Answer To Safety
I I would guess that most of you had a reason for buying your first Saab. Can you remember what that was? The story of my first Saab is relevant to the discussion that follows.
My father was in WWII and worked on airplanes where he learned the value of seatbelts. A few years after the war he purchased a 1951 Ford car and immediately installed seatbelts (aircraft surplus). Cars with seatbelts were unheard of in that day and age. I was 9 years old at the time and had the experience of riding around in the only car so-equipped. My father’s indoctrination about safety was a lesson that lasted a lifetime for me. Cars from the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s were far from safe. Injuries and fatalities were horrendous because of rigid steering columns, inferior glass, poor tires and many times the brakes were marginal.
My story moves on to 1974. We had just opened our first autobody shop and were getting our feet on the ground when a local doctor brought out his Saab 99 for me to look at. It seems no one wanted to work on it locally. He knew another doctor (who is still my personal MD) who had a Porsche that we worked on so he thought maybe we were approachable. He (Dr. Myron Doebler), convinced me about the value of the safety features found in Saab 99’s to the point that I decided that I had to have one. Dr. Doebler had at this point in time purchased a number of new 99’s and in total eventually purchased seven new Saabs.
We bought a used 1972 model 99/2-door and that began our Saab experience. We drove that car several years before we were hit by an out-of--control driver on a curve just a block from our house. The whole front-end was mashed! The insurance company totaled the car but I kept it and repaired it. However, two weeks after the repair was completed a pickup went through a stop sign and totaled the front-end of our 99 again. Same story!! We repaired the car and drove it a couple more years.
In the early 80’s my daughter-in-law, Denise, was rear-ended by a drunk driver driving a full-sized Chevy car. Denise, who was 8 months pregnant, was not injured and drove her 99 home while they towed the Chevy away. Not long after that Don (my son) and I were in another 99 coming home from a Saab Club meeting in St. Paul when we were rear-ended at a stoplight. Four cars were towed away from that accident but we drove home. We incurred no injuries in four serious crashes!
By 1998 we had worked on and sold Saabs for many years and were very confident of the safety and reliability of them. I was by now a grandpa and my grandsons, Nathan and Ben, tested most all of the safety features that these cars possess in a 1986 900S/4-door. As you can see in the picture the boys not only survived but the injuries were minimal; a broken collarbone for the driver and broken left leg for his brother. While upside down and airborne, they uprooted a tree and survived the accident! Quite a testimony for the Saab’s safety.
The next year our daughter-in-law, Tara, was hit head-on in her 9000 CD. The airbag and seatbelt worked and even though the car roof bent in the accident, her only injury was a bruised knee. Seatbelts were used in each of the accidents I’ve recounted, PLUS we owned safe cars that gave us the protection we had purchased--just as it should be.
In February of 2004, a friend and Saab owner, Bob Nelson, sent me an article from the New Yorker Magazine of Jan. 12th, 2004, entitled BIG & BAD; COMMERCE & CULTURE. The article written by Malcom Gladwell and compiles the evidence I have been interested in for several years about SUV safety. Gladwell chronicles the development of the Ford Expedition and the assembly plant that became the most profitable industrial plant in the world. In 1998 this plant grossed $11 billion with a profit of $3.7 billion. Gladwell reported that there was a $12,000 profit per vehicle. Why was the American public buying all those SUV’s at such astounding prices? SAFETY!!! SUV buyers thought that big, heavy vehicles surrounded by rubber and steel were safe!
Malcom Gladwell states that several major automobile manufacturers have relied upon a French-born cultural anthropologist, G. Clotaire Rapaille, whose specialty is getting beyond the relational to what he calls "cortex" impression of consumers and tapping into their deeper "reptilian" responses. Repaille reported that the number one feeling is that everything should be round, soft and should "give." There should be airbags everywhere! You should also be up high (drivers really know at the "cortex" level there is more chance of rollover). You’re high up and dominate. Then, there are cup-holders. These are absolutely essential to safety. "If I can put my coffee there, if I can have my food, everything is round and soft and I’m up high — I feel safe!" FEELING safe has become more important than BEING safe.
Gladwell relates in his article how he went to a Consumers Union Test Track and did a series of tests with a Chevy Trailblazer and a Porsche Boxter. The results were that the Blazer couldn’t avoid hitting things because of its height, size and weight (5000 lb.). The Porsche was able to drive out of danger, time and again, and had the ability to stop before knocking over the cones in the test. So, would the parents of America strap their kids in a Porsche Boxter sportscar or a Trailblazer? In practice the Trailblazer is good at passive safety and the Boxter with active safety. The SUV boom represents a shift from how we conceive of safety from active to passive. A large number of drivers had concluded that accidents are inevitable, not avoidable, so "the bigger the vehicle and the heavier the better off I’ll be." Has this been proven in the real world?
Gladwell quoted these safety statistics compiled by Tom Winzel a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and Marc Ross, a physicist at the University of Michigan. "The numbers are expressed in fatalities per million cars both for drivers of particular models and for the drivers of the cars they hit. For example, in the first case, for every million Toyota Avalons on the road, 40 Avalon drivers die in car accidents every year, and 20 people die in accidents involving Toyota Avalons. The numbers below have been rounded." The list of cars below are just a sampling from the report but I think it represents a large enough number of cars so that you get the idea.
| Make | Model | Type | Driver Deaths | Other Deaths | Total |
| Toyota | Avalon | Large | |||
| Chrysler | Town & County | mini-van | |||
| Toyota | Camry | mid-size | |||
| Volkswagen | Jetta | sub-compact | |||
| Chevrolet | Suburban | SUV | |||
| Ford | Expedition | SUV | |||
| GMC | Jimmy | SUV | |||
| Lincoln | Towne Car | Large | |||
| Pontiac | Grand Am | compact | |||
| Dodge | Neon | sub-compact | |||
| Ford | F-Series | Pickup |
As you can see in the list above that clearly there are many cars that can stop or drive out of harms way. It is not inevitable that it will be crushed in an accident! Saab was not included in the list because they do not have enough cars on the road or represent a large enough sample.
Gladwell was quick to point out that "traffic fatality rates vary strongly with driver behavior. Drunks are 7.6 times more likely to die in accidents than non-drinkers. People who wear seatbelts are almost half as likely to die as those who don’t buckle up. 40-year olds are ten times less likely to get into accidents than 16-year olds. Drivers of mini-vans die at a fraction of the rate of drivers of pickup trucks. That’s clearly because mini-vans are family cars and parents with children in the back seat are less likely to get into accidents."
Other statistics that Malcom Gladwell included in his article were from a 35 MPH crash test. The results showed that the driver of a Cadillac Escalade SUV has a 16% chance of life-threatening injury, a 20% chance of a life-threatening chest injury and a 75% chance of leg injury. The same test performed on a Ford Aerostar mini-van resulted in 2% chance of life-threatening head injury, a 4% chance of a life-threatening chest injury and a 1% chance of leg injury. I believe that this shows that the type of construction (unibody) like Saab has had forever, is safe when engineered properly.
Do the majority of consumers really use the "cortex" level concerning safety?
Is active safety an issue? Evidently not!
J.D. Power & Assoc., 2003 customer retention study showed that on average one half of automobile owners will repurchase the same name plate. Chevrolet ranks highest in customer retention, retaining 60.8% of its owners. Chevrolet models with the strongest retention rates include the Avalanche with 74.5% of owners purchasing another Chevrolet model, Trailblazer, 73.8% , Impala 70.1% and Silverado pickup 1500/2500 68.7%.
I’ve heard Saab officials say that about one-third of Saab owners that leave the brand move to an SUV. It is no wonder that Saab is going to finally market a "safe" vehicle. It’s about time!! We can just hope that GM puts some real Saab safety into the new product!
I urge you to obtain a complete copy of Mr. Gladwell’s article. It is sad, funny, tragic and unbelievable but brings a clear understanding as to why Saab must market other types of vehicles to stay in business in the good old USA. Our culture prides itself on being informed in this great information age, but doesn’t like to be confused by the facts! Meanwhile, I would hope that safety is one of the reasons why you drive a Saab.