Swede dreams: the PhoeniX

Barely a mile by yellow taxi from New York’s glossy skyscrapers, but a long way in socio-geographic terms, the Saab PhoeniX concept car stands, at 2am, on a street corner of one of Manhattan’s scratchier, edgier districts. It used to be all meat wholesaling round here. Many of the old warehouses have been converted into fashion-forward shops, industrial-chic loft apartments and frostily cool bars. The rest, of course, have simply been converted into abandoned warehouses. As in any such district in any city, the small-hours crowd is full of opinion.

Words: Paul Horrell
Photos: Joe Windsor-Williams

This feature was originally published in the June issue of Top Gear magazine

A drunkish, dressy couple shambles by. She double-takes and unwinds herself from him for a better look. "That car is f***ing awesome," she screams. Soon a pale hipster, hair asymmetrically floppy and jeans pipe-cleaner narrow, adds his view: "It's a Saab? It's a beautiful vehicle." Cabbies slow. Cops stop. In Britain, we're used to people like this keeping a studied detachment from the world of cars. Are they all over this one because we're in New York? Unlikely. Manhattan's an overcrowded finger of real estate and a hostile place to drive a car: most people opt out. So it must be the look of the Saab that's getting them juiced up.

And maybe too the simple fact it's a Saab. A nicely alternative brand that's been through the wringer lately, a fact acknowledged by the PhoeniX name. No one wants to see Saab die - even though far too few people will do the one thing that would really help save it: buy one.

So Saab needed a jolt. And the PhoeniX is the car to do it. Jason Castriota, an Italian-New Yorker, is Saab's hired-gun designer. His commitment to the company overwhelms you. When Castriota gets cracking, his verbal rev-counter barely drops out of the red, with a self-confidence that pins you back in your chair with the force of a wind-tunnel fan. But then he does have the CV to back it up, having worked at Pininfarina and done the Ferrari 599 and Maserati GranTurismo, plus the couture Ferrari P4/5 and Maserati Birdcage, and the next-generation SSC. All of those cars had obvious aerodynamic innovations, and Castriota says that had to be a given with Saab.

"The Ursaab [Saab's first prototype, in 1947] had aero, but it was all about low drag not downforce back then. It had a fuselage body and a canopy cockpit. Nowadays we use air to push, pull, direct, cool and supercharge, but the PhoeniX still has the teardrop fuselage and canopy. It takes an aeronautical approach to car design. Hence the winglets and so on. And it's got a Cd of 0.25, with proper cooling and wipers. The actual 9-3 replacement will have a very low Cd too."

The complex demands made of air have led to a bewildering array of solutions in the PhoeniX. Most extraordinary are those flying buttress wings levitating beyond the upper edges of the cabin. They hold lipstick rear-view cameras at their front corners, then flick back to guide the airflow, before compressing it into a vortex that flings down to the rear spoiler, making that more effective. Nice idea, but not for a real Saab eh?

Still, Castriota says that 70 per cent of a car's drag is at the nose, and that this one is very slippery. And that it will be transferred near-intact to the 9-3 replacement. If the nose is critical for drag, the tail is vital for stability, says Castriota. This one has a cut-off Kamm tail, and a high, central exhaust, because hot air moves fast and it shapes and neatens the wake. Pressure release vents lie low down aft of both front and rear wheels. The wheels dome outwards to keep the air flowing cleanly.

Physically, this is a very layered car. See the stepped, channelled sills, as well as the buttresses and the freestanding carbon-fibre valance around the tail. Inside too, material seems to float freely. But Castriota goes further. "It's also about philosophical layers. You discover more and more of it as you go on, like onion skins. I wanted to keep the Saab DNA but change the rules. To move forward and diversify the brand, increase its bandwidth. To hang onto our core buyers but also to capture people who've never looked at a Saab before." That'll be our 2am New York crowd. 

But pardon me if I just look at this as a car rather than a manifestation of a philosophy. I venture to Castriota that there's just too much going on. Isn't it a bit too busy? Messy, even? Especially when one of Saab's distinguishing marks has been a pared-back Scandinavian simplicity. A Saab shouldn't over-stimulate - it should soothe, both as a drive and as a visual object.

Castriota doesn't break step before chucking it back at me. "Look, when Bangle arrived at BMW he did five concept cars in five years. We didn't have the wherewithal to do that, or the time. We had to compress BMW's five years into five months. We released the PhoeniX at the Geneva show where the VW Group had eight cars. And we got the most coverage. This car had so muchto do. To change the perceptions of Saab, and broaden the bandwidth. And do it fast. And do something real."

Something real? Huh? A concept with scissor doors and wings like the handles of a shopping bag? "Look, even couture clothes have to fit a real human body. And this car fits a real platform. The crash structure is real, and the drivetrain, and the cooling. The packaging is real. Real people can fit inside." Indeed they can - it's quite accommodating in there, and you can even see out. It really does feel driveable.

Suddenly, as if remembering the rules of some PR script, he back-pedals a little. "It's not the next 9-3 and I didn't want this to be Photoshopped onto magazine covers as that." OK, but a few minutes later, I'm with Saab's chairman Victor Muller who can't resist getting out his smartphone and showing me an image of a 9-3 coupe he's had Castriota design. It's basically the PhoeniX without the wings and the lower-body layering, and it really does look like a car to give the TT and RCZ pause.

Anyway, Castriota says the whole nose section of the 9-3 replacement will look just like what'son the PhoeniX. The swept-back wheel-arch modelling too. And since the PhoeniX uses Saab's new platform, the relationship of wheels to bumper is right, including the shortened but more effective front crash structure, so Saabs won't look as nose-heavy. The engine is real too: Saab has done a deal with BMW to get Mini Cooper S engines. And the suspension, because Saab has announced that ZF will design and build this, although the concept has a slightly wider track. And the four-wheel-drive system - hence the capital X in the name. This is done with American Axle, and consists of a rear-mounted battery and electric drive. So it's a hybrid along similar linesto Peugeot's HYbrid4 system, but features torque-vectoring side-to-side.

I tend to dismiss concept-car interiors as designer fluff, because they always get hopelessly toned down for production. But the PhoeniX has something they swear will be here next year. It's that tablet screen, called IQon. It runs Android, and the idea is the entertainment, 'nav, comms and various sport and hybrid functions all work through the touchscreen. But that's not all. There will be an IQon app store where any Saab owner can buy and upgrade functions during their car's life. Imagine you want to reprogramme the hybrid system or adaptive dampers or the way the nav functions or the car interacts with the web. Justget a new app. An IQon beta test fleet is already running, with a kit for third-party developers that takes feeds from 500 sensors around the car.

We're hearing that both the five-door and cabrio of the 9-3 replacement will be shown before 2012 is out. Though I've jibed at the hectic and un-Saab design, I'm happy to accept Castriota's assertion that it is true to the company. It's aerodynamic, green, has a downsized turbo four, is unusual and well-packaged and practical. "It won't be a direct A4 or 3-Series competitor," he says.

But all the time I was with Castriota and Muller, and even now as I write, Saab's financial problems are hanging over it like a cloud the colour of the PhoeniX's mercury-grey paint. The factory has been closed for weeks because they can't pay the companies who supply the parts. This funding block is complicated but temporary, Muller insists, and once resolved there is the money to forge onward. Even if you don't take your car advice from to a load of intoxicated barflies, take it from TopGear. On the strength of this car, new Saabs do deserve to see the light of day.