[Michigan SAAB]

I work near the GM Tech Center in Warren, Michigan and spotted this 9-4x today on the way home from work. Odd that it has a manufacturers Michigan license plate. Couldn't get a picture of the front of it but saw it coming up in my rear view mirror on the freeway. Never got ahead of it again.

 

[afcassidy]

Beautiful vehicle, haven't seen pics of one in this color in the wild yet. Thank you.

 

[qwikredline]

non saleable pre production development vehicle I expect, someone either joy riding or taking it to the crusher....

 

[ataririder]

to the crusher, thats like puting down your dog! Better not...

 

[PlumLoopy]

Actually, there was a point in which GM took over ownership of 9-4xs that were unsold and not at Saab dealers. They sold them at GM dealerships - perhaps the GM dealers bought them at auction from GM or similar?. That's where we got ours in fact, from a non-Saab Chevy dealer who had about 7 of them. GM became the manufacturer for those vehicles, although they were technically sold as used due to the non-factory warranty. Probably the case here.


Chris

 

[ChrisAero]

Michigan "M" plates can only be used by auto manufacturers and suppliers, not dealers. Probably a vehicle still owned by GM, but could be on loan to Delphi, Bosch or other major supplier. Technically M plates are supposed to be used for "test" purposes, but often times "vehicle evaluation" can be considered a test.
It would be interesting to see if it was an "EX" vin vehicle (last two characters of vin are EX meaning it can't be registered and plated. If so it won't be sold and some GM department may keep it as long as they can justify it on their budget. Then it would have to be scrapped or donated to a vocational school.

 

[ChrisAero]

Interesting follow-up to this. I was at a test facility this week that had 5 "m" plated 9-4x vehicles. They were 2012 VINs, none higher than 00060. So I did a little more searching and found this;

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2012_Saab_9-4.shtml

So we know the 9-4 was emission certified for the 2012 model year. As the relationship regarding production and sale of the 9-4 was purely an outsourced deal (gm built them and sold the finished vehicles to Saab) I assume that when saab ran out of money GM have just kept any unsold vehicles. We saw that GM sold some 2011 9-4s through their dealers. Will any of the 2012s ever end up in customer hands? The 2012s mentioned above were not "EX" vins so there is a slim chance that a few get sold.

 

[SeaWolfOBX]

I bought mine from a Chevy dealer in Wisconsin who, I think bought around 30 from GM. I was told that it had been a GM executive demo, I got it in June of '12 with 9,000 miles on it. Just remembered the name of the dealer- Van Horn.

 

[kinggrr]

Van Horn

I bought mine from a Chevy dealer in Wisconsin who, I think bought around 30 from GM. I was told that it had been a GM executive demo, I got it in June of '12 with 9,000 miles on it. Just remembered the name of the dealer- Van Horn.

I hadn't realized they bought that many. I also got mine from Van Horn with around 200 miles on it (they said a salesman had been driving it until I bought it). They even delivered it to me in Indianapolis on an 18-wheeler car-hauler.

 

[turbojohnny]

I knew a guy that worked for Delphi, lived near Rochester NY but often would commute to Michigan. He was given a 9-4x as a company vehicle. This may be the same case.