All Entries Tagged With: "Saab USA"
Saab’s Best Foot Forward: Jan-Willem Vester
Talking Saab with Jan-Willem Vester in New York, 2008.
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG Kevin Kusina for ADL
WHILE the comings and goings of corporate press officials aren’t worth mentioning in general, but having read from SaabsUnited.com that Jan-Willem Vester has left GM…this one career transition does deserve special comment.
You see, there are p.r. reps – and then there are p.r. reps.
Every public relations professional has to tow the company line and lie, if he or she must, with a grin on their face. So, to a true journalist, the public relations man is an adversary because his job is to white wash and direct the story.
Some are so good at ratcheting out disingenuous horse pucky that you’re left sucking your teeth as if trying to remove some kind of syrupy film that isn’t there.
Not so with Mr. Vester.
Jan-Willem Vester, a.k.a. “Jan”, “Jan-Willem”, or “J.Dubya” as his onetime boss Steve Shannon at Saab USA referred to him, was a “gentleman” spokesman for General Motors.
He did follow GM’s awkwardly drawn line for Saab. But he did so graciously and with an air of humility. As a representative he presented himself and his company sincerely and with good humor.
I once threw him a curved ball on camera by asking of the 9-X BioHybrid Concept:
“If this car were an actress, who would it be?”
Momentarily taken aback, he gamely replied:
“Let’s give it a Swedish name, Scarlet Johansson.”
Mr. Vester had a remarkable knack for openly acknowledging mistakes without once betraying his employer and his work made a difference in how I approached Saab.
Nearly a decade ago, I had a political conversation with a Kenyan scholar studying in Scotland. He argued that the true international legacy of American presidents wasn’t in their policies, per se, but rather in how they went about communicating their mission with the rest of the world.
I’d like to think that in this somber chapter of Saab’s history, we can look back with the affirming knowledge that in the worst of times, Saab had the best kind of p.r. rep.
Special Thanks To GM
By Gunnar Heinrich
GM, once again, gets our thanks for inviting Automobiles De Luxe to be their guest at the Turbo X Drive Event in Boston last week. Special mention goes to Saab PR manager Jan-Willem Vester and GM rep Adam Denison.
If you missed ADL’s coverage of Saab’s latest flagship, tap the following links.
Part I: The Talk In Herb’s Garden
The Turbo X Spectacular! Part III: Thrashing Saab’s Best
By Gunnar Heinrich with Photos by Kevin Kusina
I’VE been having a difficult time wrapping my head around the word “SportCombi” lately. Apparently, there’s just no room for the “station wagon” anymore in the world’s vehicular lexicon. Wind back the clock as many as fifteen years and you’d even find Volvo busy selling 850 “Sport wagons”.
Station wagon has too much the utilitarian ring to it, though, in marketability terms it still trumps earlier names like “depot hacks” and “woodies.”
When I arrived at Saab’s makeshift proving grounds in North Andover, there were two Turbo X models lined up alongside a winding track of little orange cones. One was a sedan fitted with an automatic (same as what I drove to the event), the other was the Turbo X SportCombi (wagon) also fitted with an auto shifter.
Wanting nothing to do with something that only the Brits really want and eco-minded former 9-7X drivers feel they need, I opted for a turn at the sedan’s helm each time, every time on the track. Little did I know that my best Turbo X experience would come later with a manually fitted wagon.
The Turbo X Spectacular! Part I: The Talk In Herb’s Garden
By Gunnar Heinrich with Photos by Kevin Kusina
OVERSHADOWED by Herb’s own multi-story BMW dealer on the right and squeezed by a parking lot brimming with new Bimmers on the left, the largest Saab dealer in these United States proved a so-so location to talk Turbo X.
Symbolizing just what GM is pitting Saab’s halo car against, Automobile plenipotentiary Ezra Dyer made a showy arrival in BMW’s latest M3 sedan. Indeed, as the morning wore on and the automotive press talked and was talked-at, alternatively, the name “BMW” would surface time and again.
Starting off at 8:30 AM, GM staff held an all-business presentation on Saab’s showroom floor that set the tone for performance expectations.
GM’s G.M. for Saab, Steve Shannon (formerly Buick’s Roadmaster manager) made fleeting reference to his background and Saab’s.
“We’re much more NPR than Fox News,” said he, who also spoke of the quality rather than the quantity of Saab customers.
Mr. Shannon, armed with PowerPoint, directed the group’s focus on the new “cross wheel drive” system that Saab bought from Swedish engineering firm Haldex.
For some inexplicable reason, as I watched the presentation of power-to-wheel transfer diagrams, Subaru’s tagline kept playing in my head: “From the wheel that slips to the wheel that grips!”
Competing notions of “brand” identity aside, the Haldex system proved to be nothing less than a revolution for Saab performance (I’ll expound in Part III) and Saab is set to make the system a lineup-wide option.
Following the talk we shuffled from showroom to garage where Saab’s staff had a Turbo X hoisted on a lift. Swedish engineer Tommy Sundin ducked low and explained the engineering wizardry behind Haldex’s technological tour de force and the challenges that, “putting a new system into an old car,” presented.
Mr. Sundin reminds us that the Turbo X is based on the agèd Epsilon platform that the jet black halo car shares with an ’02 Opel Vectra and an ’04 Chevy Malibu, among others.
Following the engineer’s remarks, we made a break outside to drive off in Saab’s latest and greatest.
[Linked: Trollhattan Saab]
