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Subarus are pretty good in snow, but not so much as to outweigh their downsides for me... I had an Outback rental years ago in the Rockies in a blizzard... it was a little better accelerating in snow than our c900 + had great clearance, but not as good braking and not as comfortable as the Saab on a long drive... with good winter tires, I've never had a strong desire for awd... (especially after driving a c900 with studded tires! holy crap that is fun!) and fwiw, we live in a similar climate as you, just a bit north of the border from upstate new york...
*but* it looks like most of the new Saabs will be available with XWD... so maybe you should keep an eye out for one... most people aren't paying $50k for a 9-5, and the 9-3x is significantly less, has XWD, and a little more clearance even... the new hybrid XWD on the 2013(?) 9-3 looks very impressive (if it ever sees the light of day - I hope so!)...
biggest problem for the used Saab market going forward is not enough people are buying them new... if Saab could lure 10% of the Suby buyers, Saab would be doing just fine! and in reality, if half the Suby drivers would test drive a Saab (or anything other than a Subaru - bunch of lemmings), Saab would probably get that 10% (from the Outback/Forester crowd, probably not the Impreza crowd)... several of my Subaru driving friends recently bought brand new Foresters without test driving anything else... even though both had 3 pedals, the husbands were very underwhelmed... their wives seem to like the vertical driving position and are oblivious to the absolutely terrible handling... we rented one 2 years ago for 3000 miles + I was very pleased with my wife who despised it so much she refused to drive it again after <1 hour behind the wheel... around here, a similarly equipped Forester or Outback costs about the same as a Saab 9-3... new and, even more so, used... I think a 9-3x would appeal to a lot of Suby types...
anyway, yeah, all that is to say, I get where NoSnaab is coming from...
James...
posted by 69.63.57...
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