Saab planning XWD-equipped 9-5X wagon?

NewsFeeder · April 5, 2010

Filed under: Spy Photos, Performance, Wagon, Europe, Saab, Luxury

As you may have guessed by now, we're very excited over the prospect of a ~~reinViggenated~~ reinvigorated Saab. Our thinking is, now that Trollhattan is free of General Motors, it will get back to the business of making niche three- and five-door hatches coveted by post-grad Ivy League types with mega-potent turbos blowing into longitudinal, slanty I-4s spinning the front wheels. Even if our entire Saabian wish list isn't fulfilled, a fully independent Saab can only result in better focused cars. For instance, the 9-7X SUV will stay dead and buried.

Of course, even if the 9-7X was something of an abomination, that doesn't mean that there aren't Saabophiles out there that seek the all-weatherness of all-wheel drive combined with a lot of cargo hauling capability. While we suggest those people first seek out a Volvo C303, Saab's thinking different. Badly translated reports are fluttering that not only is Saab building a 9-5X (Saab chose to brand their AWD vehicles with XWD, or "Cross-Wheel Drive" - a fancy way of saying Haldex version 4.0) that will presumably be a performance variant, but they're also apparently set to build a XWD-equipped 9-5X SportCombi (station wagon) that will do battle with up-armored station wagons like the Audi Allroad and Volvo XC70.

The 9-5X SportCombi will be separate from the apparently still forthcoming Saab 9-4X, an actual SUV-looking CUV built on the same platform as the Cadillac SRX. It looks as if the 9-4X will be the only new Saab product not built in Sweden. One more little tidbit: As Saab wrestles itself back to its former glory, they might just be dropping the hyphenated names. Meaning that the next 9-3 might actually be billed as the Saab 93, and that this whole time we've been talking about the new 95X. Time will tell.

[source: Autoweek.nl]

Saab planning XWD-equipped 9-5X wagon? originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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