Road Test: Saab 9-3 Aero Sport Sedan

By Feann Torr - 10/Aug/2006

Driving this top shelf Scandinavian sport sedan is quite a nice experience - it's smooth and stylish, and is far less common than it's European rivals, which provides for a refreshing change of pace. But there's something else about the 9-3 Aero that stoked the embers of my automotive enthusiasm, and it is because this Saab, designed in frigid climes of Sweden, has a local connection. 

I am talking about the refined and rather potent 2.8-litre turbocharged V6 engine that gives the Saab's front wheels a real workout, and would you believe that it's manufactured right here in Melbourne, Australia, at GM Holden's engine plant and built to Saab's specifications?

While I can appreciate the subtleties of European luxury, there's something even more stirring about telling passers by and curious drivers that no, it's not a 4-cylinder car, and yes, the turbocharged hardware hiding under the bonnet is built in Australia. And yes, it will leave your 3.8-litre VP Commodore for dead. This 9-3 Aero Sport Sedan will sprint from 0-100km/h in 6.7 seconds, which the GM-owned company tells us makes it the fastest accelerating vehicle ever produced by Saab.

But there are more reasons than just it's Australian connection and boosted powerplant to take a closer look at this Swedish sport car. The range-topping 9-3 Aero V6 has quite a lot going for it, such as the luxury appointments, the good boy/bad-boy image it exudes and the way it does everything just a little bit differently from most cars. But is it worth 70,000 bones? Clearly, the Saab 9-3 Aero has the heart of sports car, but it's rivals are not likely to be running for cover just because Saab found a high performance mill for its smallish sports sedan. The question remains, is there room for another sports luxury vehicle in the burgeoning prestige segment? Saab thinks so, and we're real keen to find out:

Drive: 4/5

Sitting low to the ground, the Saab 9-3 Aero Sport Sedan cuts a sharp image, and an even sharper corner

Powered by a 184kW 2.8-litre turbo V6, sitting on classically styled 17-inch wheels and sporting a mild body kit with a tough-looking rear end, the Saab 9-3 Aero has already banked a good level street credit before you even step inside to drive it.

Turn the key, pop it in first gear and gently feel for the friction point in the clutch before opening the throttle and it becomes immediately evident that the 9-3 Aero is indeed a serious sports car, with strong levels of acceleration and showing the kind of mid-corner poise you'd expect from something with far more pedigree and far less ride height.

I have to say it - the Saab 9-3 Aero is one of the most balanced front wheel drive performance cars I've had the chance to pilot. Understeer is almost non-existent, and for something that builds up 350Nm of twist, torque steer is also remarkably subdued. I drove the wheels off this thing and was consistently impressed with its ability to tuck in its front end. This may sound crazy - warped even - but the 9-3 Aero handles more like a rear-wheel drive car than a front.

Maybe the Australian V6 has made me a bit nostalgic - the car will understeer if shoved inelegantly into a tight corner - but for the most part the car is just delightful to drive on demandingly twisty roads. 

It has a genuinely positive attitude around corners: the sports suspension tune and relatively light 1493kg kerb mass mean that bugger-all body roll hampers your short term goals of getting from the entry of a corner to the exit smoothly and rapidly. The spring rates aren't ludicrously stiff but they inform you of what the road surface is doing quite faithfully, and the damping is best described as flexible, as even mid-corner ruts and bumps fail to upset the car's direction, and this relates to everyday driving as well: it is a very smooth operator.

With the twin-scroll turbo huffing and puffing as one coaxes the car through winding passes, you never quite get that immense torque hit that is prevalent in some 2.0-litre turbos, and particularly Mitsubishi's Evolution cars. Not once was the steering wheel wrenched from my hands as I ordered the engine to work harder through a corner, and because of the smooth and soft way the V6 puts its power to the ground it really is quite a nice vehicle to hack around corners at top speed with. It's the antithesis of intimidating.

The Continental Sport Contact 2 tyres are rather large for a car of this size - 235/45 R17s - and supply the 9-3 Aero Sports Sedan good levels of grip and ESP comes in handy when the weather turns sour. It's child's play to build speed into corners with the level of grip they offer and, combined with its smooth power delivery, the 9-3 Aero Sports Sedan was a pleasant surprise, a real drivers car. 

The 6-speed manual transmission has nicely geared ratios giving the car a respectable ability to charge forward from standstill, while also able to reach high speeds, and the shift feel is befitting of a luxury car - smooth but sure, and with not too much travel between gates. 

Further to my thoughts about the car feeling quite sporty through corners, it doesn't feel exactly like a rear wheel drive car - that it's being pushed instead of pulled - when you've got the pedal to the metal and coming out of the last 20% of the corner towards the exit, but it doesn't feel like a front wheel driver in that respect either. When it's being brutalised, the Saab will tend to lean on its outside front wheel around corners but the chassis is communicative enough that you can feel exactly when you're reaching the edge of tyre adhesion and respond appropriately (usually by sweating a bit more).

After spending a few days in the saddle of the mid-sized Scandinavian sports sedan, I began to wonder what makes the Saab feel so neutral when drilled through corners, and I reckon it may have something to do with what the company calls ReAxs, or passive rear wheel steering. It sounds like misnomer - how can you have passive rear wheel steering? - but it actually works and makes the car much more responsive during initial turn in, and improves the way the rear of the car tracks through corners. On the road, this provides the driver with a level of reward that I've not yet experienced in a front-wheel drive vehicle.

Here's how it works: the four-link rear suspension uses ball joints and toe-links rather than rubber bushings, and Saab's rather clever spanner men used this setup to engineer an innate amount of rear wheel steering that is indeed completely passive - there's no servos or pumps turning the rear wheels. When you round a corner in the Saab, the forces (or elasto-kinematics to be precise) that act on the rear axle induce a teeny tiny bit of deflection in both rear wheels in the opposite direction of steering input, due to the suspension array's ingenious engineering. And wham-bam thank you Sam, passive rear wheel steering for every corner! 

Saab reckons that for every single degree you turn the wheel, you get about one hundredth of a degree of turn at the rear, but I can tell you that from the hotseat, it makes a big difference and virtually eliminates understeer. The best part of this system is that the tighter the corner is, the more force is applied to the rear wheels and so the suspension system dials in more opposite angle, however slight. Viva la ReAxs!

It's handling characteristics are easy to praise, and the though the 2.8-litre V6 isn't plutonium-bomb powerful, its relaxed power delivery can sometimes mask just how quick this thing really is. There's a touch of turbo lag early in the rev range when you tell the fuel injectors to crank hard, but if you keep the engine on the boil it'll make mince-meat of similar sized cars with 4-cylinder engines - turbo or not.

Equipped with 300 and 290mm ventilated disc brakes front and rear respectively, the Saab pulls up very strongly, though fade did make itself felt towards the end of a days driving (though it was downhill, so the brakes did get taxed more than usual). Cornering brake control, or CBC, also comes in handy when you realise you've overcooked your corner entry and need to decelerate while turning, but I also think the sticky 235/45 tyres deserve credit for the car's ability to hold it's line in such circumstances.

Saab's top spec 9-3 Aero is not just a nimble rover suited to winding country roads, no Sir. It's pretty good round town too. The turbo will calmly spool up quite early in the rev range so even with the 6-speed manual gearbox you're not always needing to change gears to keep up with traffic; just leave it in second or third and pump the throttle when you need more go. It's also a decent car for heavy traffic duties and, though this is the Aero sports model with stiffer suspension tune than it's siblings, the ride is supple enough to keep most rear seat passengers from complaining.

You don’t feel too many jarring bumps and smashes through the cabin when you hit pot holes, as the wheels move up and down the suspension mounts quite smoothly, and there's not a great deal of engine noise that makes it's way into the cabin which will definitely suit the more mature demographics looking for a luxury car with a bit of poke. Personally, I would have liked to hear a bit more of a bark from the V6, but then I also want to pay less tax. Sometimes you just have to make do...

Not as big as a Commodore and not as small as an Astra, the Saab is very easy to live with, and I found parking the Aero to be undemanding. Step inside and you'll notice the overtly sporty leather seats. Lower yourself into their welcoming cushions and you'll find ample leg room and a driver-orientated dash. It's relatively compact exterior, measuring 4630mm long and 1762mm wide, is in contrast to the spaciousness that one feels once inside. Rear seat room is average for a vehicle of this size, and will seat two adults in relative comfort.

Before I got into the car, I was convinced that it would be overly GM and not enough Saab, and though there are areas where this trend is more prevalent (check out the Interior section for details), the car's ride, handling and engine performance live up to the heroic Aero label, offering an appreciable combination of prestige and performance. The ReAxs rear suspension system is worth it's weight in aluminium alloy - pity it's fabricated from steel then - and makes piloting the turbocharged Aero through winding roads surprisingly satisfying.

Engine: 3.5/5

In early 2006, Saab dropped the 4-cylinder, 2.0-litre turbo engine in favour of the newer 6-cylinder turbo for its Aero 9-3 Sport Sedan. And what a difference it makes! Peak power has risen from 155kW to 184kW, and the 0-100km/h sprint now takes less than 7.0 seconds.

One of the best things about the engine is it's tractability, or it's ability to deliver power to the wheels without getting bogged down. You can sit in fifth and sixth gear at 60km/h and it will still pull up a hill, as the turbocharger provides extra punch very smoothly and rather early in the rev range:some 90% of its peak torque of 350Nm is available from 1500rpm. This highlights just how much bottom end pulling power it has (hint - loads). 

It comes across as a fairly flexible engine - elastic I’d call it - and will happily trundle along at 60km/h doing about 1250rpm in sixth gear, with the turbo gauge highlighting just a hint of boost at this engine speed. 

At the same time, it doesn't mind howling like a banshee, able to rev to around 6500rpm if you feel like holding on to gears, but generally speaking, it performs best between 4000 and 5000rpm.

Technically speaking, the 2.8-litre V6 engine is fed increased volumes of air via a twin-scroll Mitsubishi TDO4-15TK turbocharger (with intercooler) which develops maximum boost pressure of 0.6 bar, which is about 8.7 psi. That's not a lot of boost, but considering the engine is one of the larger capacities Saab has offered of late, it doesn't need too much boost, and this way it's longevity is improved by putting less pressure on the engine's internals.

Though the engine is built in Australia by General Motors, it is built to Saab's specifications, and feels nothing like the 3.6-litre V6 found in Holden's Commodore range, despite being based on the same architecture. Indeed, the Saab gets an altogether smoother engine, and thanks to the turbocharging it's always got a decent amount of shove, no matter what the engine speed.

Interestingly, the car felt quicker when changing gears @ 4500rpm or 5000rpm instead of waiting for the 6500rpm redline, and this is most likely because the the engine's electronic computer brain tells the turbo to start building boost pressure quite early in the rev range. As such, the engine has a great feel from standstill, able to accelerate very briskly, and as I mentioned earlier, the gearbox has a nice shift quality, and it's also quite happy to be mistreated, and the first to second shift is surprisingly solid when under duress. The gear stick itself is quite stubby and not too tall, which adds to car's sporty flavour. You can row through the gears very quickly if the situation calls for it, stirring the engine through it's torquey epicentre that begins to get serious at around 2000rpm.

At freeway speeds (100km/h) the engine ticks over @ 2000rpm exactly in sixth gear and as a result is very quiet when cruising, though for a 2.8-litre engine that doesn't huff and puff as much as some turbo engines, I reckon it's not as fuel efficient as it could be, slurping more than 10L/100km when driven on a combination of urban and highway driving. Though the Saab's performance is rather impressive, and I really wanted to give it 4 out of 5, fuel consumption brings the score down a notch, which is a shame.

Exterior: 4/5

There's no massive wings, no bonnet scoops, no gills, no strakes and nothing gregarious about the way the Saab 9-3 Aero looks. Yet it's still got a subtle aggressiveness to it that even dim-witted Uncle George can sense. It has a bullish stance on the road and looks great when you catch a glimpse of it in shop window reflections, and I think the 17-inch five-spoke alloy wheels go a long way to giving the car a real sense of veiled menace.

Being the Aero model, it gets a deeper body kit than most Saabs in the 9-3 range and this slightly bolder visual system mixes with the simple-but-tough wheels remarkably well. The red paint job plays a big part too, in my opinion. With a deeper front apron that includes an enlarged horizontal air dam to provide the intercooler with an ample supply of air, the front end looks Saab-a-liscous --  that is, reserved but sporty. Side skirts help to visually tie the car to the road and there's something to be said of the 9-3 Sport Sedan's overall shape, which took it's sweet time, but eventually grew on me, to the point where I was just a little bit crestfallen when handing the keys back to Saab's media relations team.

The 9-3 Aero's cabin is a very nice place to relax and the two tone black/beige raises the ambiance

At the rear the blown V6 Saab boasts a pair of very confident exhaust outlets, one on either side of the car, which helps give the rear a considerably stronger character than other models with a single chrome exhaust pipe. They also let people know that this Saab is not of your 4-cylinder variety and are easily my favourite visual aspects of the car. The rear also has a boot lid spoiler that, while modest in size, adheres to the car's visual theme of 'less is more'.

Interior: 3.5/5

If it were for the seats and steering wheel alone, the interior score would have been 4.5 out of 5, no question about it. This car is comfortable and sporty all at once, but there are a number of areas that let the interior down. Most of these are the 'too clever for their own good' bit and bobs, that would be useful if higher quality materials were used, but the GM cost-cutting regime made its presence felt in items like the flimsy cup holder and the wobbly plastic garnish either side of the transmission tunnel. Even the handbrake felt like it had lost integrity.

At the same token, I liked the driver oriented dash board and centre stack layout, as it's all angled toward the driver and you can feel like a pilot (Saab does make aeroplanes at all). The instrument cluster and much of dash has a completely dated design, but this isn't due to cost cutting, this is a pre-meditated attempt by Saab to appeal to long-time customers, and while pretty much everyone who saw the interior of the car said they though it looked dated and dull, I quite liked it.

The old school aspects of the interior include the directional air vents (made up of 4 or 5 slotted elements that reek of 1980s glamour), and the audio controls – treble, bass, fader – pop out and swivel in a tribute to the high fidelity stereos of decades gone by. Combined with the old-school dash and instrument layout, a push-button operated (and refrigerated) glove box, the ambiance in the cabin of the Saab is delightfully quirky, and I appreciated that.

The Saab is also a very safe vehicle, and you really do get a sense of this when sitting in the cabin - it just feels very cosseting and reassuring. Six airbags cover front and rear occupants, ESP ensures you won't go careening off a coastal road and into the ocean and features like ABS, CBC and traction control are all very welcome additions to the Aero's safety compliment.

Getting back to the heated front seats, and they were very nice to plonk oneself down on, finished in white leather with black inserts that gave them a sporty look and feel, and the head rests were fantastic. In general, the ergonomics were really good, and steering wheel was also a very trick bit of kit with good contours and a soft leather finish with silver highlights. It also featured the now-mandatory steering wheel controls, such as Bluetooth phone and stereo controls. The interior colour scheme in general was very nice, as the top half of the dash and the doors comes in a stucco/beige colour and the bottom half is black, adding a pleasant contrast to the cabin, and again, the leather quality was really nice extending from the wheel and seats to inserts in the doors. Smaller touches like the wallet pockets on the leading edge of the front seat cushion added charm, though I must admit that I put my wallet in these hidden pockets once and forgot it was there, and ending up looking for it all day... 

The stereo system and speakers pumped out decent quality acoustics with good treble and bass levels (mid-range was average), but I had trouble figuring the 6-disc in-dash CD stacker, and I'm usually canny with these things. Must be getting old... The Saab 9-3 Aero also features a fairly basic iDrive-like system, but it felt like an afterthought rather than an electronic nexus from which all the cars controls can be accessed. 

Though the cup holder that folds out of the centre dash is weak and nasty and angered me with its poor quality, the twin cup holders in the rear were polar opposites - intelligently designed and reinforced to hold heavy glass bottles. These rear twin cupholders are not located in the centre armrest like most cars, but in the under thigh cushion of the central rear passenger seat, though if you've got a third passenger sitting in the rear it becomes redundant.

And that's the story of the Saab 9-3 Aero - it does everything a little differently. Some drivers will appreciate it, and other will be annoyed with it. The interior is littered with different and quirky elements, another of which is the ignition which is located just behind the gear stick on the transmission tunnel. An unorthodox position to be sure, and indicative of Saab's position as a non-conformist brand in the market.

Overall: 4/5

Saab's 9-3 Aero Sport Sedan has what it takes in the handling and performance departments to meet the similarly priced BMW 3 Series and Audi's A4 models head on, and combined with its 184kW V6 turbo mill it benefits from a lot more street cred than the preceding 2.0-litre 9-3 Aero version. The seats are great and it looks fashionably sporty in an only-just-controlling-its-temper kind of way, it's just that some of the little things on the inside of the Swedish car left something to be desired. Some of the interior plastics are so-so, and the single cup holder that folds out of the dash is just horrid. 

But these are injustices that, in my opinion, failed to mar what is a surprisingly potent luxury sports car. The passive rear steering feature gives the Saab 9-3 Aero the kind of mid-corner poise that will catch many drivers by surprise and it's yet another impressively positive quirk in a car that refuses to tow the mainstream line. Granted, the Saab 9-3 Aero won't please everyone looking for a sports luxury saloon, but if you're in the market for a Beemer or an Audi and have about $70,000 to spend, I would suggest that you take one of these for a test drive, as you may be pleasantly surprised. I certainly was.