Saab sales and image taking off

Young buyers pick it over BWM and Mercedes

In the normal course of a story like this, I would blow corporate bumph and middle-aged opinion and sales results about Saab up your skirt until you couldn't see for blushing.

But you're in luck today, since there's a survey about the used car desires of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 to tell you about instead, and it's more compelling than the normal smoke.

Saab line-up (Photo: General Motors)

In this survey conducted by an extremely reputable firm (CNW), 1.28 percent of the respondents currently looking for a used car would consider "any Saab" as a possible purchase. Now, this number won't seem like much until you consider that the vehicle with the highest rating, the Jeep Wrangler, only scored 16.92 percent.

What's more telling about the results of this survey is that no BMW or Mercedes models appealed to enough of these young people (1 percent was the minimum level needed) to make the list.

If I can twist an old expression just slightly, being picked ahead of those two German premium brands by young people tends to give Saab a kind of canary in the cool mine status that's hard to ignore. Believe me when I tell you that these survey results will give marketing executives at BMW and Mercedes pause.

The results do not surprise me, however, since BMW and Mercedes customers have a tendency to be, respectively, pretentious or stodgy, and probably even parental. If you're a kid who wants to spray a little Eau de Voyage de Mer on his or her personality in your next automobile, you probably don't want something that your father the tax accountant or your mother the successful real estate agent drive.

Saab 9-2x (Photo: General Motors)

If this all sounds pretty superficial, well, that's because decisions between one kind of premium product and another usually are, and they are forever ephemeral. Many of the folks buying Beemers and Mercs today do so because their parents bought Caddys and Lincolns, and it's unwise to think the same kind of brand rejection won't happen with their children.

There's little real fundamental difference between cars of similar size and equipment that cost this much, so image and impression tend to take on extra significance. Sure, differences may show on roads where it's legal or even possible to go 250 kmh, but with the legal and traffic realities of North America they count for naught.

In the road reality of Canada and the U.S., then, the lineup for the GM-owned Saab brand is pretty solid. There's the entry-level 9-2X they borrowed from the Subaru which hasn't been very successful and might be replaced one day by something from GM's European lineup. It's still an excellent choice for someone looking for a sporty compact car.