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Shah, I share your concert since I am looking at a similar SAAB purchase. I have never owned a SAAB, but here is what I have concluded about SAAB reliability after several weeks of research (online, talking with SAAB mechanics, etc.)
The short answer is: 9-5s have a few endemic problems that happen to a relatively small number of owners. You hear a lot about them since they are drastic (DIC goes and poof! car stops running) or expensive (new turbo). But although a 9-5 might not be as reliable--ON AVERAGE--as, say, a Honda or Toyota, it stacks up well against most cars. Many other models/makes that have better reliability reputations can leave you in the lurch as well.
For example, my comparison vehicle to the 9-5 wagon was a Subaru Outback (my main criteria being cargo capacity, gas mileage and towing capacity). You would think that the Outback overall would be much more reliable. But you would be wrong! According to Consumer Reports, Outback reliabilty for 2001 is a bit better ("excellent" vs "very good") in 6 categories overall, and equal in 6 categories. SAAB comes out a bit better on brakes. The only major reliability difference is in electrical components, where Subaru has the upper hand.
Then I did an admittedly unscientific study of big consumer review web sites. On epinions, the '01 Outback got 0/19 negative ratings, the '00 and '01 9-5s got 0/19 negative ratings. On MSN Autos, the '01 Outback got an overall quality rating of 9.0/10 and 18/200 quality scores of 6/10 or less (9%). The '01 9-5 got 9.1/10 overall quality and 6/117 quality scores of 6 or less, or just 5.1%!
In addition, out of 32 9-5 customer reviews on carreview-dotcom that mention poor reliability, 16 of them were for the '99 model (first year), and only 6 on the 2001 (out of 199 total reviews).
There were also plenty of horror stories about Subarus with leaking headgaskets, exploding transmissions, and endless niggling problems. Not much difference from the SAAB, IMHO.
Granted, this is not great research statistically speaking; I didn't account for differing engines (both cars offer 4cyl and 6cyl) or models, and the reviews themselves aren't scientifically collected. But after groveling through all this I feel much better about a SAAB purchase than I did before, so I thought I'd share it. HTH.
posted by 216.17.25...
, Sat, 30 Oct 2004 13:49:20, Mon, 1 Nov 2004 13:25:01
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