Saab 9-5 current production comes to an end

By Matt Brogan | February 05th, 2010

The Saab 9-5, which has been in production since 1997, has officially ended production today at the company’s Trollhattan plant.

The final example of the 9-5, a SportCombi (wagon), is now destined to spend its life in the Saab museum in Trollhattan. Although Saab was still building wagon variants of the 9-5 until today, 9-5 sedan production ceased last July. In total, Saab produced 483,593 examples of 9-5 variants worldwide.

In a peculiar twist however, the Saab 9-5 will live on, with China’s BAIC having bought the rights to the current 9-5 and 9-3 models from GM late last year. Production of the models under BAIC is expected to begin in China within the next two to three years.

As for Saab’s next top-levelling Swedish offering, we expect full production of the new 9-5 model to begin in a few short weeks, with the first example already rolling off the second line in Trollhattan. Sales are forecast to start mid way through the year.

Nankano

Those newies going to be built by BAIC in China [i doubt 2/3 years, sooner than that] will they be allowed to call them SAAB?

Will they be RHD and exported?

Will they be the price that SAAB’s should have been all along, ie $25k?

Why did’nt BAIC just buy the whole company?

More to follow no doubt on this story for sure……..

Cheers
Joker

Nankano,

As far as I’m aware, a Euro company, Spyker bought part of SAAB too.
Friendly word of advice, I would polish up my facts before posting to avoid being blitzed by other posters who will make your post disappear

Joker

Allow me to correct myself, Spyker bought SAAB.
BAIC bought the rights to some of the designs.
Safety is missing from them atm

filippo

I can barely believe production of the ANCIENT 95 has only just ceased! Talk about flogging a dead horse, but then I guess Stockholm taxi drivers need to drive something.

Shak

It was only partly SAAB’s fault, as GM didnt give them any money or new tech to update their cars with.
The Oracle

From my observations, Stockholm taxi drivers have more taste than driving 9-5s. I can’t recall seeing a 9-5 taxi, though I imagine there are, I just don’t think they are very common. Most of the ones I have used are E class Mercs, BMW 5 series and many of the rest actually drive Toyota Tarago diesels. (I think they call them Previas over there)

Hjalle

Spot on Oracle, we dont have a lot of 9-5 taxis in Stockholm or the rest of Sweden really, a lot are german but most of them are the good old V70

Baddass

I bet the workers are relieved to stop building the old 9-5, after seeing it mostly unchanged for 13 years!
Hendrik

All the workers look devo, the guy in the suit looks happy to get rid of this liability.
Paddy

As far as I know, BAIC only bought the rights to produce the OUTGOING 9-3 and 9-5 models. Surely Saab wouldn’t sell rights to the upcoming 9-3 and 9-5.

@Joker I think safety is part of the car… it’s whether or not the Chinese care enough to follow through on that.