Saab 9-5 2007 Review
I'm all for trying local delicacies in a foreign country, but a bowl of hair rings (sometimes spelled "herring") or salted herring is enough to turn anyone's gills the color of mashed peas.
Swedes are also very green people as they are so environmentally aware that if they ruled the world we would all live in flat pack houses made from recycled Ikea packaging and there would be so little global warming that we should all would wear black. underpants.
Of course, we would all have to drive a Volvo or, if you're lucky, a Saab.
Luckily, you don't have to wait for the meek Swedes to inherit the earth before you can use their know-how to do your bit for the planet.
The Saab 9-5 BioPower is the company's current vision for the future, and the best news about it is that someone has finally delivered a clean, green car that doesn't accelerate like a chronically fatigued snail.
In fact, the BioPowered 9-5 has more power and torque when it's running on ethanol than it does on the nasty old gasoline, which pretty much makes it a big leap forward for those of us who love driving and trees have been equally waiting. .
The 2.0-liter turbocharged engine develops 132 kW and 280 Nm when running on E85 (a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline). That's up from 110 kW and 240 Nm, or a 20 percent increase in maximum power and a 16 percent increase in torque over the equivalent petrol model.
From the point of view of teenage boys, the Bio version will accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 8.5 seconds, compared to 9.8 seconds on petrol.
No wonder the Swedes are buying up BioPower cars the same way they usually buy up Hoover's salted fish: Since their launch in July 12,000, 2005 cars have been sold, accounting for 80 percent of all sales from 9 to 5 in the Saab house. the country.
Clearly, the availability of ethanol helps, but the struggle to find this stuff shouldn't deter Australian buyers because the car's ingenious "flex-fuel" system means it can run - without flipping LPG-style switches - on any combination of E85 and / or gasoline.
Of course, if you need to fill it up with regular unleaded gasoline, you will notice the lack of lightning. On the 9-5 we tested, the words BioPower were written in 30-foot letters on both sides of the machine (and if I had a dollar every time someone asked me if it runs on laundry detergent, I could buy him) so I was too embarrassed to take him very far.
But late at night I drove enough miles to note that it did have a significant, tuneable turbo style, get up and go.
However, unlike some Saabs, it had enough power to keep up with the top-end turbo punch.
It's not a sports car by any means, but for a family car it was more than a fair performer, with plenty of overtaking opportunities.
The steering and dynamics don't seem too bad either, but the 9-5 does drop a bit at the front of the cabin, which used to be Saab's forte.
Some of the fit and finish wasn't quite as good as we've come to expect from the Swedes, and a cynic would point to the fact that the company is owned by GM these days and thus not quite master of its own destiny.
The car also seems a bit dated, but that may be because I vaguely remember being in '9 when I was at the presentation of the original 5-1997 (and had to go hungry because there were only 53 types of herring on the menu), and all that. doesn't seem to have changed much.
However, the exterior styling has been at least slightly changed, and it's undeniably a stylish car with plenty of prestige and a slender nose.
So, alternative fuel issues aside, it's not a bad car, but is switching to ethanol worth it - worth the investment or just worth it?
The bad news is that because it has less energy than gasoline, you need to burn more ethanol to drive the same distance - about 30 percent more, according to Saab.
On the trip computer, we saw a little frightening numbers - like 22 liters per 100 km. Thus, this loss of savings will negate any cost advantage.
On the positive side - and anyone who has watched An Inconvenient Truth will appreciate - ethanol is a renewable and carbon-neutral fuel.
This is because tailpipe emissions are balanced by the amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere through photosynthesis when growing crops from which ethanol is produced.
Saab Australia estimates that you can cut your carbon emissions by 80 percent with a BioPower vehicle.
And ethanol can indeed work as a fuel source. Almost all domestic road transport in Brazil is met by bioethanol, which is produced from sugar cane.
The bad news is that the E85 hasn't gone on sale in Australia yet, but a company called Manildra owns several service stations that have ethanol pumps installed.
Regardless, Saab is taking orders for BioPower vehicles and expects them to be on sale here by June.
Unlike some alternative cars (like the Toyota Pious), the price premium won't be huge: Saab Australia only offers $1000 to $1500 on top of the base 9-5, which sells for $57,900.
The company is determined to take a high moral stance by committing itself to becoming the country's first carbon-neutral brand.
Saab buys an annual compensation from Greenfleet for every car it buys.
Under the agreement, Greenfleet will plant 17 native trees for every vehicle sold, absorbing the greenhouse gas emissions from those vehicles for one year.
