The Saab Motor Company which makes fighter jets for the Swedish air force also makes a mid range luxury sedan. The Saab 9-5 is your typical European car, it comes both in a four-door and station wagon format. Saab did one thing right when they designed the 9-5; they made it look so stylish that you forgot about the rest of vehicles short comings, meaning Saab refused to upgrade or add any new features to the model for nearly 10 years. There are some changes to the engines over the years and the Saab 9-5 surely benefitted from the automakers turbocharged technology.

Saab 9-5 used cars:

The last changes Saab did to the engine in the 9-5, was making all three models carry the 2.3-litre, four cylinder engine, this had 260 horsepower under the hood. When Saab changed to the four-cylinder engine for all models, the 9-5 came with a five-speed manual transmission.

I could only find fuel statistics for Saab 9-5′s that were made in 2006. These again were the four- cylinder engine for all three models and they get 11-litres, per 100km, for city driving and 7.5-litre, per 100km for highway driving.

You would think with Saab’s ability to make fighter jet engines that they would bring this technology over to the motor company and somehow help them make a better engine, but this is not the case. There are a lot of reports out there of problems with the 9-5 engine. When reading complaints from various forums on issues with the Saab 9-5, it has been suggested that the manual transmission particularly the shifter feels very loose. Read the rest of this entry »