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 (sedan & wagon) looks like Saab took the original elongated jelly bean that was the 9-3 and sent it packing off to boot camp. What returned was a built body that with one flicker of its HID lamps sends any Aero running to momma’s apron. This car was resculpted to look like a machine.

The Turbo X is the antithesis of Saab’s traditionally soft, organic style and by far ranks as the baddest of Trollhattan’s bunch.

Step inside the front cabin or push yourself into the backseat (be warned it’ll take a man sized shoe horn to pry you out again) and the atmosphere inside is something of a let down. Faux carbon-fiber accenting does next to nothing to spice up the ash colored leather interior. Would it have hurt to use actual black dye instead of dark grey?

Luckily, a large moonroof lets the sunshine in on all the spartan gloom.

But enough about appearances. We want results!

CROSS WHEEL DRIVE

After hearing about the benefits of cross wheel drive all morning and really not getting much of a sense of it on the highway, I wanted proof of excellence.

And that’s what I got.

Usually when the driving gets hard in a Saab, the front end starts to plow and you get a drab sense of where things aren’t headed (like round the bend). So, when I turned hard into the first sweeping left-hander, the revelation hit.

Never, ever, has a Saab performed like a rear-wheel drive car. Stepping out of the Turbo X and into any one of the old 900, 99, or 9000 rally heritage cars and their steering feels as loose, sloppy, and incoherent as a decade old Dodge Caravan’s.

The Turbo X has, by Saab standards, gone AWOL.

The car blows the past away in its vastly improved handling dynamics. Gone and buried is the chore of having to turn the wheel twice like the helm of some sailboat to round a moderate bend.

That said, some of the fundamentals still need a little more time in the tuner or should be scrapped and replaced altogether.

The brakes, for instance, are quite numb.

Time and again they panic stopped evenly and in short distances, but mashing the pedal gave you the (tragi)comic sensation of stepping on a rapidly deflating air cushion. There’s no feedback, you just stomp and pray that something happens on the other end.

Similarly, body roll in hard cornering seemed a bit too pronounced for contemporary performance sedan, though I’ll keep the ride quality, if that’s the trade off.

TROUBLE TRANSMITTING

And lastly, that bloody automatic transmission. Some media folk suggested that if you used the wheel controls to manually shift through the gears, you’d be rewarded with sharper performance. Whatever. The cog swapper was the team’s weak link.

Bury the gas pedal and there’s some decision process that goes through several electronic departments before a consensus is reached to actually downshift. At which time, there’s a tick or two of turbo lag as the engine room has just received the call from the transmission department that more power is, in fact, requested – ASAP.

This whole bureaucratic process which must rival the DMV’s finer moments kills time. There is every reason to believe that Turbo X would be capable of hitting 60 mph in five as opposed to five point seven seconds if it didn’t have a dawdling shifter (the standard shifter does the job in 5.4).

You might say that traditional Saab buyers don’t care about those numbers – and that’s true. But GM is eager to prove something in performance terms against the likes of BMW and Subaru with this Turbo X experiment. Getting the numbers right by using the right equipment would help.

But let’s get back to that handling prowess…

The Turbo X is now a “safe” handling car that comports itself in fast twists in the best traditions of a neutral, rear wheel drive car.

Coupled with a let-the-driver-play stability program, the XWD system makes any driver look good around the track and is 110% forgiving with sharp lefts and rights asking for modest counter inputs in conditions that would have had any non-assisted rear drive car facing backwards or any old Saab pushed straight into the weeds (or welcome tents).

It’s hard to understate the new caliber of handling performance that the Turbo X presents for the Swedish marque. Such is the difference that I’d say that the Saab Party Faithful should brace itself for the eventual obsolescence of the front drive setups that the company pioneered all those years ago.

MANUALLY GIFTED

Following a few hot laps around the track, I decided that it was time to find some realworld backroads to wind one of the road-going demo cars through. As fate would have it, the only one available with a stick was a depot hack SportCombi.

Take the gear shift in hand and select a gear.

It’s a crisp action that performs fluidly with a well sprung clutch pedal. Here again, a revelation for Saab.

Old 9-3s and 900s had loose, incoherent shifters that were really no more precise in performance than anything that a standard Mazda or Toyota would offer. This shifter is certainly on par with any manual from Audi – or Mercedes-Benz, for that matter and gives a good Swedish thumping to Subaru’s (lowsy) setup.

I had so much fun driving the SportCombi that I forgot that I was lugging around an extra box behind me. Anyone manhandling driving a 9-5 SportCombi should trade theirs in for the Turbo X SportCombi fitted with a standard transmission.

Road noise was still quiet on road in the wagon except for the everpresent bruit from the exhausts. One minor note of disquiet would broadcast over really rough surface when the rear panel over the spare tyre would pop open and slap shut.

Saab has a winner on its hands. Though, we’ll see how much good press it will actually generate for the marque in the face of relentless Teutonic competition.

The fact that only 600 or so Turbo X units will be sold Stateside also ensures that this model will remain Viggen-special. That said, the real victory is, in fact, the XWD system that will find its way through the entire Saab range.

I can’t understate how transformative power going to four wheel truly is for the marque in changing how people will come to know Saabian performance in the future.

Heck, for one afternoon the charms of XWD even made me overlook the marketing drawbacks associated with driving a wagon called “SportCombi.”