Saab 9-5 2.3T | Shed of the Week

Long-term readers may recall that Shed has two children. Potting, his estranged son, is thought to be experimenting in hydroponics somewhere in the Reading area. Shed is still in touch with his daughter, Garden. She’s got a good job in education and a littl’un just starting at big school. Like most people below the age of 65 in the UK she’s struggling to get by, so Shed helps her out on the transport front by giving her the odd car from his yard, some odder than others.

His last contribution, a Skoda Octavia Scout, conked out spectacularly in many very expensive ways ten minutes after he gave it to her. Mortified by guilt, Shed is presently trying to find a replacement vehicle that won’t cost him a fortune to buy or cost her a fortune to run. Anyone fishing in the murky sub-£2k pool knows that cars tend to fall into one or the other of these categories but rarely both at the same. Shed realises that a Nissan Note will tick both boxes reasonably well but he also knows that this is a desperation choice. Far better, surely (he thinks) to go for something that might only tick one box but that will be infinitely more exciting to drive than a Note, the modern-day equivalent of the motoring cockroach known as the Toyota Corolla. 

Something, you might say, like this week’s Shed, a Saab 9-5 2.3T Vector Sport Estate. The price is right at £1,395 but the running costs box isn’t ticked. Average fuel consumption won’t be brilliant at 27mpg but the main elephant in the room for 2024 drivers is, as usual, vehicle tax. If this car had been registered seven months earlier, its vehicle tax would have been £415 instead of the £710 Shed thinks it is. Hopefully, he’s got that wrong as usual and someone will come on the forum to put him straight, but if by some miracle he has got it right the tax bill is going to be £62.125 a month. Shed has a big jar of old half-pee coins to which he would happily give Garden occasional access but he knows that laying out the other £62.12 every month will probably be a step too far for her. 

What would she be getting, though, if Shed did take the plunge? A big, comfortable and reasonably swift estate that will accommodate all the stuff you’d conceivably want to carry, like the postmistress, plus some of the stuff you wouldn’t, like Mrs Shed’s mother. Vector Sports came with cruise, electric driver seat adjustment, heated sports seats, leather lovely, parking sensors and plenty more. In fact, the Vector Sport had everything the Aero had bar the sat nav which you probably wouldn’t want anyway. 

Saab did a refresh on ’06 model year 9-5s, the results of which you can see here. Not everybody liked the chrome-overdosed front end look and the back end wasn’t much better either, the people who were designing the tailgate lights having apparently never met the bods responsible for the lights in the rear wings. While we’re on the subject of dimness, older Saabs had the excellent Night Panel which blacked out most of the instrumentation lighting on your dash apart from the speedometer’s. Shed isn’t sure if later cars like this one had Night Panel, but he thinks the switch in the middle of the three to the right of the wheel might be something to do with it.

In Aero models, the long-established 2.3-litre B235 turbo-four engine went to 256hp and over 300hp in the factory-sanctioned Aero Hirsches. The low-pressure B235E version in our Euroshed was less ambitious at 182hp, but with 207lb ft at 1,800rpm it breezed along nicely enough. Wagons like this one returned 0-60 times in the mid-eights with a manual gearbox. The 5-speed Aisin auto trans added a fair chunk of time to that, like a second, but for everyday use it was well suited to the car. Some old-school Saabites preferred the feel of the manual but others reckoned that was like stirring a bucket of iron filings with a bent poker. Takes all sorts. 

The auto could generate electrical problems over time, but not as many as the 2.2-litre diesel that Saab used before they replaced it with the 1.9 in 2005. The petrols were generally OK but the well-named DIC direct ignition system was a pain, broken throttle housings caused misfires and the timing chains got rattly. Any oil leaks in that area were expensive to put right. White smoke from the exhaust meant a blown turbo and power steering fluid didn’t always stay where it was supposed to.

The MOT on this one comes up next month. Last October’s test uncovered a minor exhaust leak, a non-excessive oil leak that has been non-excessively leaking oil since 2021, and another ‘offside front nail in tyre’. It should have held back its run. That’s one for any football fans out there.  

Anyway, after due reflection and all things considered, not least the righteous vengeance that will come his way from Mrs Shed’s biggest saucepan if it goes wrong, Shed has decided not to buy this Saab for his daughter. That means you can buy it. Hurry up though because, as the ad says, this is their last Saab 9-5 in stock.