Category: Executive 
Price Range: £19,580 to £29,536
Comfortable ride, fine interior design, distinctive image, powerful and characterful petrol engines, good crash protection, improved diesel
Only one diesel engine to choose from now; though fast, not that sharp a drive; 2005 facelift won't please the conservative Saab faithful
Interesting and well-made alternative exec, if hardly state-of-the-art; estate models make the most sense. The updates of autumn 2005 have gone a long way, however, towards keeping the 9-5 appealing in an ever-more competitive market sector.
The 9-5 is a powerful car and detractors will argue that there's always going to be a limit as to how much turbocharged power you can channel successfully to the front wheels.
However, the old front-wheel scrabble and torque-steer has been much-reduced (traction control and stability control are now standard in all versions). You can still drop the clutch abruptly and feel it squirm - fun if you're playing the hooligan, less fun if you pay for your own tyres - but it's not as easily provoked as it once was, and the tautly-sprung Aero is now more tractable and less twitchy.
Thankfully, the 9-5 feels nothing like a Vauxhall Vectra, even though the two cars share a lot of their basic underpinnings. The Saab-specific tunings have been modified further in the latest revisions, sharpening up the handling even more and steering has been much-improved for a more direct, accurate feel. The new 1.9 TiD is much less nose-heavy than the outgoing diesels and all feel more agile than their predecessors.
All 9-5 engines are turbocharged, so none of them are exactly lacking in urge. The 2.0t is perennially sweet - and quintessentially Saab - while at the other end of the range, the Aero (now 260bhp, up from 250bhp and 230bhp in the 9-5's early days) is faster than ever. It's now offering a top speed of up to 250 kph and 0-60mph acceleration in 6.9 seconds (manual-transmission saloon): we don't doubt those figures at all. All the petrol engines, though, are best judged on their mid-range performance rather than the standing sprint; with the typically flat and wide-spread peak torque curve, they give exceptional in-gear acceleration over most of the rev range.
No 9-5 has, as yet, a six-speed gearbox, but the engines are so torquey and flexible, this really doesn't matter. The 260bhp Aero could perhaps benefit from an overdrive-style sixth ratio to improve motorway fuel consumption, but it has an impressive ability to pull strongly in any gear and just keep on coming, aided by a "superboost" function to momentarily increase torque. The auto gearbox is less sophisticated than that of many rivals, slow to respond even with the steering wheel-mounted paddle shifts, though Sport mode livens things up a little.
The new diesel - as in numerous GM products and the Vauxhall/Opel range - is also a surprisingly effective proposition, and, although it's a little bit noisy on start-up, is satisfactorily smooth and refined once up and running, as well as being well-suited to the 9-5.
