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Comment by francis_lewis | Hacker News Reader

While it obviously depends on what other cars you’re considering, Saabs are very safe cars [0]. Could help in convincing your wife!

[0] https://youtu.be/c1Z284Fv0cc

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I was t-boned by a Chevy avalanche truck that was going 35 miles an hour.

Both cars were totaled. The avalanche driver and passenger were taken in away in stretchers. I and another passenger were fine, one passenger had a laceration from broken glass and one had their arm jammed.

The Saab was really amazingly designed for safety and everyone was shocked that I wasn’t paste as the center beam on the side was pushed in about two feet.

Back in the early 90s my brother, a new driver, was driving my dad's 900 turbo on a wet road at 60mph, dodged a plastic bag on the road, spun out, and went into the trees. Totaled the car, dented every body panel, and snapped a ten-inch-diameter tree like a toothpick by ramming through it with his driver-side door. Only injury: passenger had a cramp in his calf from pressing his feet so hard into the floorboard as they spun through the trees.

Nice! Definitely going to give that a shot. I don’t think we’re actively considering anything in particular yet, but a ~10 year old car from a brand with a strong emphasis on safety seems ideal for a teen driver from my perspective. Not sure about the parts situation - is it possible that they were mostly drawn from the GM parts bin toward the end?

In that video, I cracked up at “a designer with… another Swedish car company.”

You can still get parts, although if you're going through your mechanic they can be expensive, especially if the mechanic isn't a SAAB specialist. I do think its worth looking to see if you can find a SAAB specialist. When I was based in NYC, Swedish Underground was by far the best SAAB mechanic I ever used (it was booked usually 1-2 weeks in advance with just Saabs) and everything that was fixed, stayed fixed.

+1 for the importance of a good Saab mechanic (if you’re not working on it yourself). I think the deciding factor on if I buy another Saab in the future is my proximity to a decently rated Saab specialist.

There is still plenty of parts to get, the Swedish government took over the spare parts so some parts are sold by Orion [0]. I have yet not failed to get a spare part that I need for my Saab 9-5 -04.

[0] = https://webshop.saabparts.com/

Edit: Missed a very important not in the last sentence.

It would be interesting to re-test past 5 star NCAP cars in 2023, see how they hold up.

None would get more than 3 stars as you can't get a higher score without active safety systems. Pretty much all results would be compressed in the 0-2 stars range. Even if a 2003 car would be perfectly safe in a rollover or a offset frontal impact it would be deducted points because it doesn't have lane assists or drive fatigue warning or radar cruise control (barring some S class or 7 series that might have had these features).

There are some tests like that. Here's one (not 2023 though):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwGgRUkrnng

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