BY ALISA PRIDDLE
Saab celebrates 25 years of convertibles with a concept designed to explore what open-air motoring can be in the future. It also is yet another glimpse into what an eventual Saab 9-1 will look like.
The Swedish automaker will show the 9-X Air BioHybrid concept in October at the 2008 Paris auto show. The car is billed as a design study, with a unique canopy top, wraparound windows, and a driver-centric cockpit. The gauges appear frozen in ice.
The 9-X Air is a four-seater, two-door convertible styled to look like a true coupe when the top is up.
Saab says it designed the convertible in parallel with the 9-X BioHybrid concept that was shown at the Geneva auto show and is thought to be a step in the development of an all-new Saab 9-1 to expand the lineup. The two use the same powertrain, a turbocharged 1.4-liter that runs on E85 bioethanol fuel, and it is coupled with hybrid technology. It is a mild hybrid system, saving fuel with its start/stop capability, but cannot propel the vehicle on electricity alone. The mild hybrid system is expected to be on the market in GM vehicles in 2010 as the next generation of the system in such cars as the Saturn Vue and Chevrolet Malibu hybrids.
The 9-X Air makes its auto show debut 25 years after the first convertible from Saab was shown at the Frankfurt auto show.
Mark McNabb, GM’s North America vice president in charge of the premium channel (Saab, Cadillac, Hummer), tells Car and Driver he thinks the Saab brand is strategically significant, and as the industry embraces the downsizing of engines and green initiatives such as ethanol and hybrids, Saab can play a unique role in GM. “The market has moved towards them,” McNabb says of Saab.
And with the 9-5 being replaced next year, and the body-on-frame 9-7X being replaced with the more fuel-efficient, unibody 9-4X in the fall of 2009, the brand is essentially seeing a real overhaul over the next 14 to 18 months, he says.
