Oh, Saab! The quirky Swedish carmaker that has had a rough go of it in the last couple of decades.

In their heyday, Saabs were great, safe, little cars with enough character to set them apart from other brands.

I won’t say General Motors ruined the brand, but things started to go downhill fast after the General took charge. It was in that era that we get the ad featured in today’s post:

Now we should be clear here that the Saab 9-2x was not specifically a GM product (like the 9-3 and the 9-7x). Instead, the 9-2x is sometimes referred to as the Saabaru since the car was nearly identical to the Subaru Impreza wagon of the time.

But it speaks to the dilution that sapped away the uniqueness that used to be Saab.

And, full disclosure: I probably should have included Saab in my previous post about dead GM brands. But I like Saab and figured it needed its own, individual recognition.

Anyway, if you wanted to learn more about the Saabs of 2004, there’s a handy website near the bottom of the page:

Actually, if my memory serves me correctly, SaabUSA.com was featured in a lot of ads of the time as it was the primary site for information about Saab products for the U.S. market.

Saab no longer sells cars in the United States (or anywhere, for that matter). So what becomes of a site like SaabUSA.com?

These days, Saab is more of a defense contractor, so it makes sense that SaabUSA.com focuses on the company’s military and security offerings.

Oh! And it should be noted that SaabUSA.com actually redirects to www.saab.com/markets/united-states. That means the company still owns SaabUSA.com and is doing something productive/logical with the domain. Good for them.

I guess that’s not really a bad thing that SaabUSA.com no longer has car information. The company is no longer a car brand, and it’s no longer owned by GM. So maybe this is a win? It’s certainly not the worst web strategy we’ve seen.