Saab 9-3 Sport Wagon

The Saab 9-3 SportWagon is a slightly left-field alternative to all those high-priced German estates. Handling and ride not quite up to par, so concentrate on the value and the performance.

• Comfort

  The ride is shuddery and gets worse with sportier chassis and tyres. But Saab's seats are great and the ergonomics well sorted.

  

• Performance

  Spec your 9-3 with a light-pressure turbo engine and you'll have useful overtaking performance at the price thousands less than a weedy 318i engine in a BMW. The turbodiesel engines are pretty lively too, and then once you go to full-boost or V6, you'll be tearing up the tarmac. Possibly accidentally.

  

• Cool

  On the way to being as cool as those ice-block rear lamps.

  

• Quality

  There is a slight old-school GM feel of wobbliness about some bits of the interior, but this car is fundamentally solid and they've had years of practice screwing them together. No worries.

  

• Handling

  The more powerful the engine fitted the less satisfactory: you get wheelspin and torque steer and general fuzziness. It can cope with the diesels and lower-power petrols well enough, especially if the roads are smooth and open. The XWD all-drive system is the only sensible route for the full-fat turbo versions: still not brilliant finesse, but security and decorum.

  

• Practicality

  The boot, if you load it to below the windows and keep the back seat up, isn't huge. But it's a car that presents you with lots of options in use, all of them carefully thought through, like the double-floor boot.

  

• Running costs

  Saab is getting more and more folded in with GM, which means close-to-Vauxhall servicing prices, a good thing. Low initial prices mean low absolute depreciation too, and some of the engines are pretty economical for their performance.