🏎️ Max Finds Your College Professors Car

GM. Happy Wednesday. It’s mid-week, spring has sprung.

Winter is over, which means life goals are real again.

Time to get smart, sophisticated, & look the part.

But we spent $300k Monday and need to do all of these things affordably.

What better option than a car that came from the factory (incoming lie, sorry) with a free black turtleneck, thin-brimmed glasses, and an architecture degree?

Here we go: A 2001 Saab 9-5 Aero Sedan

THIS IS ANOTHER ONE YOU ARE LEGALLY OBLIGED TO READ ALL THE WAY THROUGH, JUST CAUSE ITS A SILVER SAAB DOESNT MEAN ITS NOT INTERESTING.

• 🌏️ Driven around the world: 3x

• 🧓 Moving picture to get in the right headspace: https://youtu.be/Sx2e-8FGkB4

• 🏇 Can beat 230 horses in a fight

• 💰️ Predicted Price: $9125

• 📆 Auction Ends: Monday, March 27th, 2023

Alright gang, admittedly this is one is because we got a little too big for our britches on Monday. The GT-R is awesome, but subscriber count is low and Elon simply will not accept my advertising money right now, so the automotive empire that is and will be MaxFindsCars is in a little growth LULL.

But that’s okay. We are still here honing our craft, showing the world why a 2001 Saab is interesting.

Was it hard to find interesting things about this car?

Maybe.

Were the majority of the videos I found about this car hand filmed 8 years ago, featuring large British men with spiked hair claiming they’ve ‘done it all’ and the last thing for them to experience in the world was driving a Saab 9-5?

Yes, actually.

But don’t despair dear reader. This car is still cool as hell. Or… maybe not THIS car, but the vibes of this car.

Let me explain.

Wait but first we all agree the tri-spoke wheels are sick, right??

What Makes The Saab 9-5 Aero So Cool?

• Do you have imposter syndrome? BOY OH BOY SAAB IS THE BRAND FOR YOU

• Saab’s Origin Story and (SPOILER ALERT) sad sad demise

• NIGHT PANEL (and other features with worse names than NIGHT PANEL)

The Brand of Geniuses the World Over

(yes this is the same video I linked in the intro, WATCH IT AGAIN)

Are you a political science professor at a mid-major university? No?

Are you a silver fox architect whose hobbies include cycling, reading Shakespeare, geo-caching, and the opera? Still no?

Well, would you like to drive the same car as these impressive folk?

Idk if I am alone in this, but Saab driver’s have always seemed inordinately smart. Like, I would bet the average IQ of a Saab driver is the highest of all car manufacturers.

WAIT I JUST FOUND A VIDEO THAT SAYS THERE WAS A STUDY AND THIS IS ACTUALLY TRUE.

attempting to verify sources…

I am unable to verify, but I have reliable(ish) anecdotal evidence that this was actually true at one point. Wild.

Okay, sorry, back on track. For the sake of upholding possible future brand partnerships by which I will earn generational wealth (thank you cash cows), I WILL NOT posit a guess as to which car is at the opposite end of the ‘smartest owners’ list.

I truly will not say what my opinion is.

Back to the original point…

Let’s say you’re NOT high IQ (like a particular author behind a burgeoning automotive newsletter), and you’re self conscious about this fact. You want to cover up your middling intelligence, wear turtlenecks, and act like you’re reading Dante’s Inferno for fun.

Or, further, maybe you’re the type of person who owns a copy of Walden by Thoreau, but HAS NEVER READ IT, and prays to god no one you invite over actually HAS read it and starts to ask you questions about it.

You definitely didn’t buy it just because you thought it would look sophisticated in your Zoom background. Max did NOT do this…. ha ha… um

Anyways THE POINT IS if you want to look smart a Saab is the move. It competed with the likes of BMW and Mercedes in its day, but was the alternative option.

Think like… hipster who has some money in their middle years vibes.

Saab’s Origins and Demise

Okay, so the vibes are right. You want to come off as sophisticated and thus will be purchasing this Saab. Great!

Let me give you the cliff notes of the brand so when someone asks why you went the alternative brand route, it doesn’t go the same as if they asked A SINGLE QUESTION about the plot of Walden.

All I know is its about a cabin in the woods or something.

Saab I know a bit more!

SO, back in the 1930’s when making fighter planes was allllllll the rage in the ol’ continent of Europe, Swedish aerospace company Saab made planes! War planes! Fair warning: I know basically NOTHING about planes.

They fly and some have propellers. They scare the shit out of me to be in. Etc.

Just casual plane knowledge.

BUT Saab made some pretty cool looking ones. The B18 Bomber and J21 (which has a WILD look to it).

Once WW2 was over, Saab realized that demand for war planes had dropped a bit and so they decided they should diversify into… yes you guessed it… hotel toiletries!

Jk, cars!

And that became the bread and butter of their business until their DOOM in 2014.

Throughout Saab’s life though, they always maintained key pillars of their philosophy and heritage intact.

This 9-5 Aero, for example, has airplane inspired overhead controls and an absolutely SICK feature called ‘NIGHT PANEL’.

Night Panel is a feature pulled straight from planes to minimize light output on your control panel while you’re flying at night.

Hitting the button in a Saab car is slightly less cool, I’d imagine, than doing it in a fighter jet, but its still pretty sweet.

Check it out here: https://youtu.be/Xgh2zbifn7E?t=34

Saab’s airplane inspirations even drove (ha!) it to creating a JOYSTICK CONTROLLED CAR, called the Saab Prometheus, which is simply preposterous to imagine.

AND IM NOT DONE. To START this car, key ignition is like… in between the center console and arm rest - right by the shifter.

I’m not sure if fighter jets have keys… but if they did I bet they would be in the center like this Saab.

In early 2000’s, Saab began to die for a few reasons.

First, its kind of a niche brand. It didn’t have the reach, recognition, or luxury of its competitors. This made demand relatively low vs the likes of BMW and Mercedes.

Second, they would NOT compromise their pursuit of building better, safer vehicles. Like Volvo (another Swedish automaker), Saab had a reputation for STRICT safety standards. To the extent where, apparently, their cars roof supports (b-pillars and such) were so strong that it made the FIA regulated ROLL CAGE unnecessary in Saab’s rally cars.

This obsession with safety made Saab’s production costs exorbitant compared to other automakers.

In the 90’s, Saab being a relatively small player in the automotive world and its high costs led the company to sell 50% of its shares to General Motors, a partnership that went QUITE POORLY.

GM’s attempt to keep Saab afloat led to it attempting to convince them to take other, cheaply made, GM sedans and simply rebrand and rebadge them as Saab’s to save money.

It’s important to understand that most cars GM made during this time period were total shit.

Saab took GM’s idea and car and effectively completely ignored them. They swapped out body panels for thicker metal to improve safety, they completely re-styled the car, and re-wrote the software underlying GM’s satellite navigation system because they did not think GM’s software was good enough.

Saab would not compromise the product in pursuit of squeezing some extra dollars out of its loyal customers. Perhaps if they had compromised on this a bit, they would have survived, but… in the words of a random YouTube commenter: “Saab died with its ethics and philosophy intact, unlike its rivals.”

Saab refused to allow its brand (characterized by their air fairing heritage, commitment to creativity, and uncompromising safety standards) to be diluted by GM, so when GM started to go under in the late 2000’s they sold off Saab to the highest bidder. It was bought by a high-end, low volume automaker, Spyker, who was never able to make the ol’ number go up. Saab ran out of money and was dead by 2012.

Alright folks, before we sign off, quick confession corner…

Idk how I keep accidentally making these things longer and longer! I specifically picked a Saab, a car I thought I would have VERY LITTLE MATERIAL FOR, so that I would be punching out around 9pm (the evening of this writing) after blasting through 800 words of that good good content.

Now, however, it is MIDNIGHT ON A TUESDAY, and we are nearing the 1800 word mark.

MaxFindsCars might be the Saab of newsletters; uncompromising on product to the severe detriment of its ownership.

I wish I had less morals and just pumped these out using ChatGPT. Fortunately for you all, as soon as I figure out how to put a notary stamp in an email, we are going to have a stamped certification that this newsletter is allllll human labor baby.

Oh, also this Saab has air conditioned seats! No more swamp ass for you, dear reader!

That's a wrap for today. New Editions come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday! While you wait, go out and drive! And if you want more, be sure to follow Max’s Twitter (@maxjzin)

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