Originally posted by jonlg I'm astounded how many Saab or ex Saab owners there are amongst the Pentax community - maybe because we're all people who appreciate sound engineering (and both Saab and Pentax are very engineering-led companies) plus we're people who don't follow the herd. The herd buy Canon and Nikon because it's what they think pro's use and because they offer a comprehensive 'system'. One of my Canon owning friend's objections to Pentax is that in his view they don't offer a sufficiently broad 'system' but frankly I dispute that. Unless you are a professional sports or wildlife photographer you're never going to buy a Canon 500mm F4 lens or a 400mm F2.8 so the fact Pentax don't (currently) offer one is neither here not there. It would be like saying you won't buy a Ford because they don't race at Le Mans!
The fact is that people buy into Canon and Nikon because they are 'systems' and then spend the rest of their life shooting with an 18-55mm kit lens and maybe a cheap 70-200 zoom - it's a farce really.
jonlg
PS Interesting to hear of your land rover experiences because in many ways they echo ours - absolutely sublime cars let down by reliability - the same could be saidf for Jaguar too in my experience, indeed the Jag was so unreliable it made my TVR look like a Toyota!
Although I do own three SAABs none of them are on the road replaced by very generic silver RAV4s of first and second generation that are all over town. In my defence my sister offered me her RAV at wholesale price and it is 14 years newer than what I was driving so I took her up on that.
SAAB also had a very poor owner with GM who knew not how to market them or even what models to make, hence the lack of hatchbacks with the 9-3 and 9-5. GM and Hoya are similar in what they wanted from the companies, and if GM was better managed they might have found a stable better buyer for SAAB but at the time GM was doing the backstroke in the deep end of the pool and had to grab a lifeline. The SAAB products about to be produced when GM bailed were the best ever and should have been sucesses. SAAB was farily sucessful in certain markets, NE and Colorado in the US, the UK and more so in Canada than adjacent parts of the US. Pentax is also more sucessful in some markets than others, for example better in Canada than the US and better in Japan then elsewhere.
The 645Z is more expensive than what I paid for any of my SAABS but never once did I have one that was not at least 10 years old. People bought SAABS because they did what they wanted from a car, Pentax cause it does what they want from a camera. Having said all of that I am not going to switch to Canon just because I now drive a Toyota RAV.
Ivan who owed 1980,1984,1985,1986,1987,1988 SAABS although several were free