Here’s one news item from the Geneva Auto Salon we haven’t covered, because it doesn’t involve us. Company CEO and President Jan Ake Jonsson told the press conference last week that the new Saab 9-3 Griffin trim level would start below 19,000 euro, for both a sedan and the SportCombi wagon.
It doesn’t involve us, yet. But if Saab can stick with this kind of pricing strategy, and expand it to the States, it may finally have found that small, profitable niche it so desperately needs.
Nineteen thousand euros equals about US$26,600 by today’s change rate. So what’s the big deal? The most affordable Saab sold in the United States is a 2.0T sedan, which starts at $29,725, including destination charges. The new, low-priced European Griffin is just a couple of thousand less than the car sold in the U.S., and probably comes with a lower level of standard equipment – no leather seats or remote locking, for example.
The U.S. market SportKombi is available only in the uplevel Aero trim, and starts at a healthy $37,795 including destination.
Even though 19k euros gets you $26-thousand bucks, the prices are not quite equal. We always get more car for our money compared with Europe, even when the car is imported here. That’s why European and Asian manufacturers have been wringing hands over the exchange rate and the recent devaluation of the U.S. dollar. The Griffin’s price crosses below the 20k psychological barrier, of course, and a few options will put most buyers in the low 20s. But the Griffin represents the latest of several breaks from Saab’s General Motors past. For a couple of decades, GM tried to make Saab a BMW competitor, even as it had to offer special sub-$30,000 models of the 9-3 sedan in order to move the metal.
Compare the Euro-spec 9-3 Griffin’s pricing to BMW. The cheapest 3 Series sold in Germany is the 318i sedan, which stickers for 28,900 euros, or nearly $40,500. The cheapest 1 Series in Germany is the 116i Tourer, which starts at 22,200 euros, or $31,100. I haven’t been able to pin down a comparable European price for the Opel Insignia, but it looks like that front-drive 9-3 competitor starts in the mid-20s.
I hope that with the Griffin, Saab finally is giving up on the idea of becoming a Scandinavian BMW. Everybody would like to be BMW, and sell as many 3 Series as they do at the markup the cars command. Swedish cars, both Saab and Volvo, used to be moderately priced cars that happened to come from a high-cost country. GM and Ford tried to make Swedish pate’, stuffing Saab and Volvo with premium leather and features in order to convince buyers that these brands were BMW and Mercedes competitors. Few were convinced.
Now that Audi has gone upmarket after BMW and Mercedes, and with some success, there’s lots of room where Audi was about 15 years ago. In 1996, the first A4 replaced the Audi 90. If you bought one then with the base 1.8 turbo four, and maybe front-wheel-drive instead of quattro, your monthly payment was not much more than for a well equipped Honda Accord or Toyota Camry. What a no-brainer for buyers bored with their third or fourth Accord or Camry, cars they could not kill.
That’s where the 9-3, especially its replacement promised for 2012, should go. If Saab dropped the price by a couple thousand, it would become a Buick Regal competitor, and that’s a good thing these days. It could be cheaper than Ford’s next-generation Fusion Titanium.
Listen, here, Saab. Don’t try to chase BMW or Audi; bring the Griffin trim level here. Offer it across the 9-3 line, including the SportCombi, the convertible and a hatchback. With Volkswagen’s North American arm aggressively chasing Toyota and Honda on price and product, there’s a small, but potentially steady and profitable niche for a distinctive European brand that provides a step-up most new car buyers can afford. By the way, did you notice that I made it all the way to the end of this post before I used the word “quirky”?
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