SAAB was never really a car company. It was an aerospace company that ended up owning a car and truck manufacturer due to some mergers and ran its car division more like an eccentric hobby. The car part was never really well run or financially self-sufficient and that just became more obvious when the car part was eventually split off from the aerospace part.
edit: Just correcting my history slightly. SAAB actually started their eccentric car hobby before merging with a car manufacturer, partially due to to the end of WW2 leaving them with a surplus of engineers and capacity and wanting to put them to some use. The rest of my point basically stands
I'm sure someone has a good writeup¹, but as to my understanding they had a really weird lineup where the 9-5 competed with 9-3 and both were basically low-end luxury sedans marketed as family cars.