SAAB 9-3 owners have reported a total of 1,749 problems for their cars built in the 13 model years listed in the chart below. The chart shows the number of problems reported across all service years for each given model year of the SAAB 9-3. The 2003 SAAB 9-3 cars have the most problems reported (318 problems).
The following chart shows the 24 most common problems for SAAB 9-3 cars. The number one most common problem is related to the vehicle's air bags (379 problems). The second most common problem is related to the vehicle's engine and engine cooling (227 problems).
It would not be fair to compare the SAAB 9-3 of an older model year to newer model years since older vehicles have been in service longer and thus are expected to have more problems. In order to compare the reliability across 9-3 model years, we use the PPMY index which is defined as the problems reported per thousand vehicles per Year. A smaller PPMY index indicates greater reliability of the given model year cars.
PPMY = P / S / Y * 1000,
where P = total problems reported during the life of a SAAB 9-3 model year; S = total units sold of the model year; Y = years since the debut of the model year (the age of the vehicle).
The results are shown in Table 3.
Another way to measure the reliability across the model years of the SAAB 9-3 is to use the total number of problems reported during the vehicle's first year in service, as shown in the Table 4.
| Model Year | Problems Reported |
|---|---|
| 2011 9-3 | |
| 2009 9-3 | |
| 2008 9-3 | |
| 2007 9-3 | |
| 2006 9-3 | |
| 2005 9-3 | |
| 2004 9-3 | |
| 2003 9-3 | |
| 2002 9-3 | |
| 2001 9-3 | |
| 2000 9-3 | |
| 1999 9-3 |