2009 Saab 9-3 Aero TTiD long term update
January 5, 2009 by Paul Maric
After leaving our last post on the Aero TTiD with such high praise, things have taken a slight down turn following my most recent set of travels.
One of the first things I did after the last update was a run through the mountains. The first thing I noticed which remained evident through the entire trip was the torque-steer. It’s not too vicious, but is amplified due to the light steering.
The big steering wheel tends to jerk from one side to the other all too easily, and there seems to be no variation in steering weight from standstil to highway speeds. The car would certainly benefit from a variable setup of some sort, otherwise the torque-steer and abrasions in the road start taking over and irritating the heck out of the driver.
If you put the steering to one side though, it isn’t such a sorry tale. Torque out of corners always seems to be available courtesy of the twin hair-dryers attached to the motor.
Gear shifts are quick and easy and there’s enough room for the odd heel-toe.
The best part about the package has to be the brakes though. The anchors on the 9-3 Aero pull this thing up in tremendous fashion. The system seems to be tailored for the road as it holds the brakes on for longer (which can be seen by visible tyre marks on the road).
One point of concern for me is the stability control. Our standard test circuit includes a section of dirt which is a good test bed for a vehicle’s stability control. The Saab’s system seems to intervene quite late and when it does finally take action, it doesn’t do all that much to bring the car into line. A heap of driver input is required to pull the car back onto a straight track.
This is a good point for sporty driving, but a bad one if things get out of shape. I also can’t seem to find the button anywhere to switch off the stability control!
This latest stint of driving has included plenty of city kilometres, so as I expected, the fuel consumption has rised slightly. We are now sitting on 5.8-litres/100km.
The latest update also brings with it even more compliments from passers-by about the LED strip on the headlights.
Our performance tests indicate the 9-3 Aero TTiD is on par with Saab’s 0-100km/h claims. Saab claims a 0-100km/h time of 8.5-seconds for the six-speed manual, our best run was 8.63-seconds. The stability control intefered during takeoff, so it would easily achieve 8.5-seconds had the stability control been switched off.
Tests conducted by Paul Maric. Graph shows Speed | Time | Distance 
Print it: 
To turn the ESP of use the up/down arrows on the left side of the steering wheels to scroll to “Settings”. Press and hold “SET” button down until u enter into the settings menu. Scroll until you find “ESP”. Hit “SET” again. then scroll from “ON” to “OFF” and hit “SET” again and exit the menu, u can do this by pressing the button with the red phone on it, also marked “CLR”.
ESP is now off and you can have some fun ;-)
Thanks Eddy.
I’ll be sure to jot that down!
Ummm What’s achnors???????
Also having a slower reacting ESP may be their way of allowing the sport version to offer a little fun without being over cautious. Same way Ford set up DSC differently on XT compared to XR.
Frontman:
It’s a typo for ‘anchors’, fixed now.
I disagree regarding the stability control.
Systems such as those you’re suggesting will give the car free reign during hard driving, but will step in aggressively when necessary.
The system on the Saab on the other hand lets you have play, but doesn’t step in enough to control the situation.
Systems like those fitted to the V8 and HSV Commodores are superb. They allow plenty of play, but when they step in, they well and truly stop anything from going wrong.
For God’s sake Eddie, what’s wrong with a simple on/off switch? This is like scrolling through a multitude of levels to change the volume on the radio, like early BMW I-drive. Who the Hell can be bothered with it? If Saab thinks this is the way it should be, then the sooner they are on the scrapheap the better. But their resale values might beat them to it.
That’s an extremely linear acceleration curve (curve? line!).
Actually I can’t make sense of it as there is no temporary cesation of acceleration when I’m assuming it would be changing gears.
It’s called flat shifting Simon.
I can quite clearly see the shift points as movements in the line as second and third are grabbed.
I assumed that was where gears were changed, but the chart is consistently demonstrating acceleration without a break at gearchanges. This is not possible unless you are driving a CVT. Perhaps the device that captured the data has a large hysteresis. The sampling rate is in 10/100th of a second intervals.
A DSG gearbox changes in 3-4/100th of a second which might not be reflected in such a graph but as this car is a conventional manual I would suspect the data logger has missed the change.
So Benji, although I’m sure he would have “flat-shifted” to get the best 0-100 time, I don’t think that accounts for the anomaly in the graph.
I can clearly see the shift points Simon…why do you find them so hard to spot?
You know that the car has momentum during the gear shift? So there will only be a minute break in acceleration, which is visible on the graph.
Mmmm torque steer – something the RWD brigade don’t seem to able to cope with. My Vectra 3.0CDTi has similar levels of torques as the Saab, is based on the same floor pan, The torque steer isn’t a problem most of the time.
Regarding the brakes “The system seems to be tailored for the road”. Slight hint here Paul – Its a road car not an off roader. It’s a European car designed for roads in Europe which largely are surfaced with Macadam. I would not have thought for a minute the Swedes have even considered Australian gravel roads when setting up brakes.
lol
I too can see the “shift” spots, that’s not my point. Yes a car has momentum during a gear shift, my point is what you correctly said is a “minute break in acceleration”. That is to say, the positive acceleration stops when power to the wheels is interrupted i.e. at gear change. Thus a flat spot should occur in the graph where that occurs. My point is I can’t see any flat spots. I don’t think they are visible on the graph.
I guess I got it wrong in saying it’s an acceleration curve. It’s actually a speed Vs time curve. Despite that I would expect the speed increase to stop momentarily when gears are changed (as the wheels aren’t being driven, there can be no increase in speed). I don’t see any evidence of that.
Why would there be flat spots?
A flat spot on that graph would suggest that velocity remains constant all of a sudden for some reason.
If the shifts were as quick and with full force as they would be when conducting a test like this, momentum is maintained during the gearshift and there is still an increase in velocity.
Yes, there would be a variation in acceleration, but as I said before, it\’s only minute and that can be seen on the graph.
Granted, whichever timing device was used isn\’t updating as quickly as it could be as you can see by the graph, the end result is the one that counts.
It’s impossible to have an increase in velocity while there is no force applied. That’s precisely what happens the instant the clutch is engaged.
Try accelerating hard on a flat road, then holding the clutch in. Watch your speedo. The speed will not increase any further the instant the clutch is engaged.
Captain Mainwaring Says:
For God’s sake Eddie, what’s wrong with a simple on/off switch?
For the 2008 Model Year Saab replaced the ESP ON/OFF switch on the dash for s Sport Mode button for cars with Auto and a blank for Manual’s. I guess they figure that most ppl will never have a need to turn the ESP off, so if its in the cars settings menu its no real biggie.
Interesting comments guys. However, surely the points are moot since Saab have sought bankruptcy protection and are unlikely to find another owner. Saab sales down 66 percent so far this year, and drop is off a fairly low base anyway. Saab’s global sales of 93,000 cars mean that once GM stop paying their bills they cant survive.