Saab 9-5 Estate (1999 - 2005) 2.0t Arc 5d Auto Owner Review

Roomy, comfortable, attractive and fast enough for normal use. It's thirsty, oddly enough it gets better fuel consumption if you thrash it. Unfortunately if you use the throttle with any sort of enthusiasm you'll rack up points on your license. It's had the odd niggle; every time you start it, it reports a fault with the anti theft - as this is secreted under a wheel arch, I just cancelled the notification. It occasionally reports the ABS and traction control as faulty - presumably a slightly dodgy wheel sensor I couldn't be bothered to sort out. Lots of nice little touches - the rear view mirror dims if someone comes up behind you with their lights too bright. If you have your front wipers on and you reverse it put your rears on intermittent for you. The display doesn't tell you lies, the MPG and distance to empty seemed to track reality accurately. Performance wise it was the bottom of the range - as an Olde Pharte I could drive the 2.3 souped up Turbo version at the same insurance cost as my one - If I was deliberately looking for a SAAB again I'd go for the faster version - second hand it's no more expensive to buy and (strangely) no worse on fuel consumption. I bought it off eBay - it was mis-described as a 9-3 and a few things in the listing were off-putting. I viewed the car which was nice in the flesh, and put in a maximum bid which was double what I ended up paying for it. Never regretted getting it, despite the pathetic fuel consumption! I bought it cheap, low mileage, and it's given me 3 years of trouble free motoring, never failed to start, despite getting left standing for days/weeks at a time, in cold weather.