Top Gear this Sunday

[Nutcase]

The twin of my Car is going to be on Top Gear this sunday :cool: well, the road legal, decent condition twin ;D along with a few other friends' cars.

Can't wait, hope they're gentle ;D

Shame I won't get to see the prog til later in the week :angry:

[Toby]

Sounds intriguing, can you tell us more? :)

[Nutcase]

Very little as I don't know myself!

http://www.saabclub.co.uk/index.php/latest-news.html

[volospian]

For years Clarkson has been dismissing Saabs as "nothing but a rebadged Vectra" and so on, then last night, he's telling us that "Saab even changed the Sat Nav!".

The toruble is, people believe this "just a rebadged" nonsense and even tell their friends not to buy cars on that pretext. The amount of crap I used to read on, for example, the Motors forum at OcUK. I even read posts saying things like "buy a Mondeo, they're amazing" and then a post later in the same thread, by the same person, saying "OMG, WTF??!? Don't buy an X-Type, they're nothing but a rebadged mondeo, FFS!!".

Now Saab have gone to the wall and some of that "rebadged vectra" nonsense bandied about by these idiots is to blame.

[Nutcase]

There is an element of truth in there - whilst Saab indeed did rework as much as they could, large parts of the suspension, brakes etc. are all still the same. Which is why such things as "Viggen Rescue Kits" are needed to bring the handling back to how a Saab should be - but certainly a lot of brand damage was done.

A few niggles with the show - Captain Slow pissing around with the pedals in the 2-stroke - that's what freewheel is for! And whilst the c900 convertible is a bit flexible, not a word on the fantastic lines on it?

Sort of dissapointed with the 5 door dropped on its roof - whilst it makes the point very clearly, waste of a classic. That's the top gear way though - I feel even for the marinas they trash!

I think they quite liked the 99 Turbo :cool: felt a bit smug after that :)

[A Place of Light]

Clarkson in "being a complete bell end" non-shocker.

[Stan_Lite]

The toruble is, people believe this "just a rebadged" nonsense and even tell their friends not to buy cars on that pretext.

I've seen evidence of this quite a few times. I always wonder what sort of people take seriously opinions espoused by 3 man-sized children who make a living from driving sideways around a track in expensive fast cars and smashing things up.

Top Gear is relatively harmless entertainment - as long as you view it as entertainment and pay no attention to any "advice" you may hear on it. It's actually quite shocking how much influence it has.

Having said that, I never miss an episode - fortunately I have the good sense that, should I ever be in the position where I'm buying a new car, I won't be making my choice based on the say-so of messrs Clarkson, May and Hammond :p

[Kitten]

They've rebadged it you fool!

...Not my words, but the words of Top Gear magazine.

/Partridge

Sent from my Galaxy S2

[divine]

Sort of dissapointed with the 5 door dropped on its roof - whilst it makes the point very clearly, waste of a classic.

To be fair though, they're hardly going to be going out to find a minter to just break, they'll be doing it to something that's destined for the scrap heap regardless.

[Nutcase]

There's quite a few rare options on that car that people have already lamented!

[Flibster]

I've seen a couple of photo's of Saab's that have been in accidents where every panel is bent and battered, wheels ripped off and so on. But every window was still intact. Thats one hell of a good safety cell.

[Matblack]

What DOES the extra button do?

[volospian]

What DOES the extra button do?

As far as I know, it is exactly what it says, an extra button. I think they were an option so that you could add an extra "custom" feature like, I dunno, spotlights or something. I don't think, by default, it actually did anything, it was just an extra button.

It may have allowed a SAAB optional factory feature, but I think it was just a button you could buy that fitted the blanked out dash holes so that you could add aftermarket stuff yourself and make it look like a factory fit, so you didn't have to drill holes and fit odd shaped switches. Instead of stocking a whole range of buttons for every possible option, it just said "extra".

On the car Clarkson was driving, whatever it was supposed to switch on had probably been fitted and subsequently removed by previous owners.

[Nutcase]

Pretty much :) on Chris' car, the one they used, it would've switched the rectangular driving lights that were originally dealer fitted (chris' has round ones now). On the later 2 doors that had dealer fitted water injection it switched that on and off.

[volospian]

I've seen evidence of this quite a few times. I always wonder what sort of people take seriously opinions espoused by 3 man-sized children who make a living from driving sideways around a track in expensive fast cars and smashing things up.

That's the trouble with shows (and magazines) like TG. They try to be funny. It's not amusing to say "well, this car shares some of the same components as this car over here, as almost all cars are built to a more cost effective platform style process nowadays, VAG, GM, Ford, they all do it" It's possibly funnier to say "meh, it's a just a x... in drag... with funny cross eyed headlamps... like this [close up of Clarkson crossing his eyes and pulling a funny face]"

And to be fair, it's not really Clarksons fault. As you say, his job is to entertain. He'll happily admit (indeed he has done on several occasions) that he makes most of his stuff up on the spot and often cannot even remember the other car he's comparing this particular model to.

I've got one of his books made up of his newspaper articles over a year or so and he states "a Saab engineer once told me the maximum power you can put through FWD system is x" however, he uses this quote about 3 times and each time the power figure the Saab engineer apparently gave him is different, ranging from around 170hp to 200hp or so, depending on the car he's reviewing at the time.

Yet still people listen to what he says, and spread it around as though it were the answer to life, the universe and everything.:confused:

[A Place of Light]

And to be fair, it's not really Clarksons fault. As you say, his job is to entertain. He'll happily admit (indeed he has done on several occasions) that he makes most of his stuff up on the spot and often cannot even remember the other car he's comparing this particular model to.

I think the exact quote from JC himself was "I don't do facts, I do opinions ".
Sadly, most people don't seem to comprehend this.

[Del Lardo]

Now Saab have gone to the wall and some of that "rebadged vectra" nonsense bandied about by these idiots is to blame.


Pretty interesting report on what else what to blame (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1021083/Who-killed-Saab-Automobile-Final-Report-December-19-2011.pdf) though strangely no mention of Top Gear ;)

[volospian]

Pretty interesting report on what else what to blame (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1021083/Who-killed-Saab-Automobile-Final-Report-December-19-2011.pdf) though strangely no mention of Top Gear ;)

No specific mention of TG, but that's not surprising as nobody is going to name individual people or programs as directly responsible for the demise of a car manufacturer. However, there is plenty of talk about "press coverage" and its impact upon sales...


A new 900 was developed and launched in 1994, based on GM’s Vectra platform. .... The Vectra of the 1990s was not well received..... Initial sales volumes were encouraging, enabling Saab to post a small profit in 1994, its first since the GM acquisition. However, negative press coverage eventually took its toll on sales of the 900. ... Saabs were frequently referred to in the motoring press as 'quirky', and were particularly liked by those in the
creative professions, academics and the like. Even by the time GM found a buyer for Saab in 2010, this not-always-positive image had not dissipated:

'[The sale of Saab ensures] that sherry-sipping Shakespeare scholars in American faculty lounges can continue to buy their car of choice – at least for a while'.

The 9000 replacement, the 9-5, was introduced in 1997 and was also built on a Vectra platform. Like the 1994 Saab 900, this did not help the reputation of the vehicle, with a perception amongst purists that the new models were not ‘real’ Saabs....

[Dazzy_G]

We lost a big contract doing Connected IVI with Saab when they went bust :( That was interesting work as well!