Okay, back to the Col du Petit St Bernard, which sits some 1800 metres above sea level, meaning a non-turbo car would be short about 18 percent of its power in these environs.
On the French side of this Alpine pass, there's a valley road that runs up a nice gentle grade from the hospital that St. Bernard established to the border station at the Italian frontier. For different reasons, the hospital and the border station are now abandoned, but they make excellent markers at the ends of the test circuit.
Not that it's officially a test circuit, of course, since the road this day is lined with support cars for the X-Adventure race and various other innocent bystanders on motorcycles, bicycles and cars. But the experienced and careful auto journalist can find a stretch to put Saab's claims to the test.
Lower down the mountain, I had tried launching a Saab 9-5 Aero Wagon a number of times and always managed a 0 to 100 kmh time of about eight seconds, which is a little longer than what Saab claims, but that difference could be explained away by the load it was carrying.
What's important here is that I was able to do pretty much the same time at about twice the altitude on the Col du Petit St Bernard, and in shorter spurts at higher elevations (in excess of 3,000 metres) the car felt exactly as responsive.
As a result, that comfortable and capable Saab wagon could have blown the doors off nearly every normally-aspirated hot rod they drive in Europe, or here in the Rockies for that matter.
And while the members of EnduranceAventure.com will be able to train their bodies to compensate for the greater altitude, those expensive European hotrods never will.