I just want to say two things:

1. I want to acknowledge this fan-based movement, started and sustained by Saab enthusiasts on Facebook, using the social media tools freely available to them and everyone who uses the site. We have observed the movement and I want you to know that as always, your faith in our products and your desire to see Saab successful is a great morale boost for all who work with Saab.

2. I want to urge everyone who does participate in this movement to do so with respect and dignity. I’m pleased to say that as I’ve watched the movement evolve, that this has been the case for 99.9% of people. There will always be one or two, however, who get a little too enthusiastic in getting their point across. I hope you all understand that being abusive or coarse in any way will not serve the cause you seek to advance at all.

GM are, and hopefully will continue to be, significant stakeholders and suppliers in our business. They have genuine concerns that they need to address for the sake of their global business. We all hope that there’s a way that those concerns can be addressed, a way that leads to a good outcome for all concerned.

Social media has opened up opportunities for customers to voice their opinions, which is what is happening right now. We simply ask that if you choose to make use of this opportunity, then please do so respectfully.

Thanks for your support and understanding.

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I’ve got two Must Read stories for you this week.

The first is a quick writeup about Bud Clark on Car and Driver. US Saabers, especially those in California, may be familiar with Bud Clark. Sonett owners and enthusiasts will be familiar with the name, too. If you’re not familiar, consider this your chance to get acquainted.

Bud is one Saab person I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting personally yet. The first time I heard his name was in relation to his turbocharged Saab Sonett. Those last three words should give you an idea of the character and the Car and Driver article comes across wonderfully well.

You can see videos of Bud’s Sonett on Youtube. And if having a turbocharged Sonett isn’t cool enough already, it’s also fitted with Inca wheels, which looks absolutely perfect.

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The second must read article is actually in Swedish, so you might have to get Google Translate working to read it.

This SvD article profiles an American Saab-owing couple, who recently travelled to Trollhattan on holiday and actually attended the Saabs United Octoberfest event on October 1. SvD sent a reporter to their home in New York to see some more of their collection and speak to them about their passion for the brand.

For me, there are two stories here. The first is the couple themselves, whose support for Saab is steadfast (they just bought a 9-4x to support the company and have nine other Saabs between them). The second is SvD sending a reporter to the US to get the story, which is a commendable commitment of funds for a Saab good-news story, from a newspaper that I’ve been fairly angry at from time to time.

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The Local has a post that would make for some interesting debate in the future – What is a Swedish Car, anyway?

There is still a small amount of xenophobia floating around a potential Saab sale. And yet Saab haven’t been Swedish-owned for over 10 years. Volvo are in the same boat. And both are still considered as Swedish companies.

As I said, we’ll save this one for the future, but it’s an interesting thought piece.

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What’s a 1992 Saab worth?

$150 a week to this particular owner, who is renting is Saab out to strangers as part of an experiment in Collaborative Consumption. He’s also renting out his guitar, an air mattress and his dog!

It’s not a Saab based article at all but still makes for some interesting and entertaining reading.

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Spontaneous grass-roots support at it’s best. We’ve been watching this silently for a week now and done nothing to promote it, nor do we intend to, but it’s being talked about publicly now and as a Saab fan and enthusiast, I have to acknowledge it.

We have the best fans in the world. And the best behaved, I’m proud to say. Your support is appreciated, but the way you carry yourselves with dignity and respect is appreciated even more.

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It was hard work printing, then pasting all those photos on to the paper, color matching them, etc. Paper cuts galore! But we got there eventually

Here’s a time-lapse:

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Thanks again for submitting your images. I hope you enjoyed the mosaics and please feel free to spread the word!

And I hope you watched the video right through to the end

Today, we’re there!

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Saab celebrate 100,000 Fans on Facebook

Saab today celebrated an online milestone, with 100,000 fans choosing to join the brand’s Facebook page.

“This is a wonderful milestone for Saab. We have always had a significant online presence for a company of our size, with much of it being fan-driven. To reach over 100,000 fans on Facebook is further testimony as to how much our fans like to associate themselves with our company” said Knut Simonsson, Vice President Brand & Marketing at Saab Automobile.

Saab’s Facebook page started as a fan-driven initiative. When Facebook opened its services to brands, a web-savvy Saab fan named Kroum Vassilev in Toronto, Canada, started a Saab Cars page. With occasional updates and simple organic growth, the page attracted over 13,000 fans on its own. Mr Vassilev contacted Saab Automobile AB in Sweden and offered to transfer the page to their ownership in October 2009.

Since then, the page has continued to grow, with fans from all over the world now getting updates from Saab and sharing their Saab photos and stories online.

“Our oldest Facebook friend is every bit as important as the most recent one.” said Simonsson. “The Saab fans are very active. They are always busy, uploading and sharing images, telling stories, and even assisting one another with advice when necessary.”

To celebrate this historic occasion, Saab fans from all over the world contributed over 1,200 photos through various social channels, which have been used to build a selection of mosaic images. These mosaics, featuring both historic and new Saab vehicles, are available for download by fans at the Saab Cars Official account on Flickr.

Some fast Facebook facts:

• The top 5 locations for Saab fans on Facebook are: Sweden, United States, Italy, United Kingdom and Finland.
• The typical fan is male, and between 25 and 34 years of age.
• 76% of fans are male, 21% of fans are female, and we are still trying to identify the remaining 3%.
• The single busiest day for new “Likes” was on the 23rd February 2011, with 7,384 fans joining the Saab Cars Facebook community that day.
• A normal day sees a net increase of approximately 80 new fans

Saab’s Facebook page is part of a multi-channel social media strategy that includes the Inside Saab weblog, a dedicated Saab official channel on Youtube, the Saab Newsroom as well as accounts on Twitter.

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/saab
Inside Saab – http://inside.saab.com
Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/saabcarsofficial
Newsroom – http://newsroom.saab.com
Twitter – @inside_saab and @saabnewsroom
Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/saabcarsofficial

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The mosaics are below.

There are two different sizes of each available at the Saab Cars Official Flickr page. One is super-big for your detailed enjoyment. The other is set at 2560 x 1440 pixels, suitable for custom sizing for your computer desktop.

ENJOY!! And thanks for your support, and your contribution.

We’ve already received in excess of 1,000 images for use in the mosaic but we want more!!!

I’m preparing two mosaic base images, one modern and one historic. They’re looking great in the trial runs so far, so get your images in via the channels below and make them even better!

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As I alluded to earlier in the week, we have a milestone of sorts coming up on our Facebook fan page.

To celebrate this milestone, we thought we’d put together all of your cars into a big mosaic image that we could share with you as a gesture of thanks for your continued support of Saab.

Never seen a mosaic image before? Check these out. A mosaic is where you take many smaller pictures and use them to make a larger, single image. The image to the right is a mosaic I made up a few days ago, featuring the Catherina concept made by Sixten Sason at the Saab Museum. We’d like to do something similar to commemorate our 100,000th Facebook fan but we need your images to do it right.

So, how can you submit your images for this fun-tastic project? We have several options.

Facebook: First you’ll need to “Like” our Facebook fan page. Then you can submit an image to the page and include the tag “Saab100K” in the description. You must include the “Saab100K” wording with the photo and in doing so, you’re permitting us to use the image for the purpose of this mosaic, which will be made available for download and/or use via various Saab media channels.

Flickr: If you’ve got an account on Flickr, you can simply tag any photos you want to submit with the “Saab100K” tag and I’ll do a search on that tag in the next week. Please make sure your tagged photos are set up to be downloadable, that they are your own original images and that you’ve set your creative commons permissions appropriately.

Twitter: Attach an image with the hashtag Saab100K visibile in the tweet. You can ping me @inside_saab as well, if you’ve got space.

Email: You can email images directly to insidesaabofficial@gmail.com with the tag “Saab100K” in the email (either the title or the body text). Again, they should be your own original images, and by sending them to us, you are permitting their use as part of this mosaic.

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The image can be anything you like, so long as there’s a visual Saaby connection. It can be your car, or an event you attended, or a photo of you posing with your car. As long as it’s Saaby, we can use it.

The final mosaic will be made available to the public for personal, non-commercial use. Saab may also use the mosaic image for marketing purposes.

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We will be using automated software to create the mosaic so whilst all photos submitted will be in the pool, there is an outside chance that not all photos will be used by the software. We’ll try to set it up so that all of them are, however.

So, remember the tag Saab100K and get your photos ready to go! We will soon be 100,000 strong and we look forward to celebrating this with you.

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I’m sure there’ll be some significant news this week and we’ll cover it as it happens. But I also wanted to share a little of what you’re doing in the Saab world – i.e. our customers, our fans.

There have been quite a few events on recently, and I’ve received a couple of personal emails from people that I’d like to share, too.

We’re closing in on an important milestone on our Saab Facebook page – 100,000 fans – and we’d like to do something special to celebrate that as well. If you’ve not joined the party on Facebook, log in and ‘Like’ us.

We’d like you to be part of these celebrations, too. We’d like you to get your camera out, or trawl through your hard drive and send us images of your Saab. We’ll be putting together a downloadable mosaic image featuring as many of your photos as we can.

Get your photos ready. We’ll put out a call for them during the next week and we need HEAPS of them.

And I know that everyone would be familiar with the legendary Saab 900…..

Many of you, including yours truly, would have owned a Saab 9000 at some time in your Saabing career…..

But how many of you are familiar with the Saab 90000?

The number 9 is, of course, quite significant in Saab’s history.

Saab’s automotive indulgence began as a spinoff from the company’s aircraft operations. Civilian projects within the group began with the number 9, and so Saab’s model history has seen us go through the Saab 92, 93, 94 (Sonett), 95, 96, 97 (Sonetts, again), 99 and on to the 90, 900, 9000, 9-3, 9-5, 9-2x, 9-3x, 9-4x and even the 9-7x in United States (and yes, there was a 98 in theory, but it didn’t happen in reality).

It seems fitting therefore, that we mark the passing of 90,000 fans on Saab’s Facebook page, both as a red-letter day for the company’s social media presence and also as a thankyou to everyone in our absolutely wonderful enthusiast community.

Saab actually has one of the highest online engagement levels in the automotive sphere. Yes, there are companies that have high numbers of ‘fans’, but in terms of the number of fans who regularly interact with the company, Saab is actually way, way ahead of its competitors.

That Saab fans are interested in what’s going on at the company is not news, of course. The reason I’m writing this here today is because my former website, Saabs United, was a vital hub of activity during the sale process, when Saab were bought by Spyker Cars. That support continues to this day, through Saabs United and other sites like SaabWorld, Saabnet, UK Saabs, STCS, Saablog-In, SaabNews, all the various Saab club websites and many, many more (apologies if I missed your site, am writing from memory here). And all of that’s in addition to the 90,000 friends we’ve made on Facebook and the people who follow us on Twitter, view our videos on Youtube and connect in other ways.

Thanks very much for your support. We’re continually looking for new ways to enhance our presence online and it’s wonderful to know that with anything we can achieve in that space, there is a willing audience to take it in.

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I’d also like to acknowledge the assistance of a Saab nut in Canada, a guy named Kroum, who gave Saab a vital head-start in the Facebook space. We remain ever thankful.

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My name is Steven Wade. Those who know me – and many who don’t – call me Swade. I’ll be your host on a journey into the heart of this wonderful carmaker. Some of you may be familiar with my previous work at a site called Saabs United, where a community gathered to support Saab as they were sold by General Motors to become an independent company back in 2009/10.

Saabs United continues in good hands, but Saab has decided to take a big leap of its own into the social media space, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be invited along for the ride. To work for one’s favourite company, in such an exciting industry and at such a unique time in history is an enthusiast’s dream. I’ve been on board with Saab for just two weeks and I’m already bursting at the seams over the things I’ll be able to share with you here. I’m even more excited about the things I can’t share, but we’ll get to those eventually.

Saab is blessed with a passionate and engaged enthusiast community. Rather than just have you read press releases, we want to bring you Saab’s story from the inside, and from an enthusiast’s point of view.

• How do we design and build our cars?
• Who are some of the people involved?
• What goes on behind the scenes?
• What happens at Saab events around the world?
• How can you connect more with Saab?

We don’t want you to just read more about Saab. We want you to experience more, too. We’ll give you plenty of information about official Saab events around the world and how you can participate.

A conversation needs two or more people. We invite you to connect with us here at Inside Saab via the comments section of the site. You can also connect by being a fan of Saab Cars on Facebook, or following Saab’s official twitter feed. We’ll add more outlets for connection as time goes on.

Saab has a rich history, filled with superb, iconic vehicles and stories of innovation, determination and triumph over adversity. These are still challenging times for Saab, but they are also exciting times as we build on our independence and bring you an all-new range of Saab vehicles and technology.

You’ll be able to read about it all, right here on Inside Saab.