Stories are hitting the interwebs today about the recall that’s been issued for the Cadillac SRX – sister model to the Saab 9-4x – fitted with the 2.8T engine.
Earlier this year, one of our automotive colleagues, Saab owner and future film star Gunnar Heinrich, blew up a Cadillac SRX during a test drive. He accidentally filled the car up with regular fuel when it’s designed to run on premium. That was seen as a one-off, but now multiple owners of the SRX have done the same and a recall has been issued so that all owners can have their software recalibrated.
Apparently, the engineers dialled up the boost on the SRX’s engine software, probably so that it was capable of hauling around the bloated SRX’s huge weight. In order to do so, they slapped a “Premium Fuel Only” sticker on it that a number of customers have ignored, leading to them grenading the engine when running it on regular fuel.
This is the same engine that’s been running in the Saab 9-3 for several years without similar incident, but at 280hp rather than 300hp like in the SRX. It’s also the same engine that’s slated as being the Aero engine for the Saab 9-4x, which is why this could be a blessing in disguise.
We’ve all gone through the hand-wringing associated with the delayed release of the 9-4x but this episode with the SRX means that delay might turn out to be a good thing. Hopefully Saab can go to school on this and take actions to avoid similar problems when the 9-4x is launched in April next year.
Weight reduction? Better software?
Whatever the answer is, Saab have a chance to learn from it now and avoid the problems associated with a recall later on.
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