In january my wife got her first Saab, a white 2008 9-3 convertible.
The car is a beauty, although since we bought the car we only had a few sunny days, and those days where too cold to drive with the top down. But every car admits some slight changes to make great looking car even better. And after reading Tim’s article on his girlfriend’s car, I got a little bit jealous.
This time I wanted to make its fascia a little bit prouder of being a Saab, and for that last Friday a package with this arrived at my place.
Yes it is a 9-3 Griffin centre grill. 🙂
This is the metamorphosis.
it is not easy, but if you don’t have thick hands, you can take the centre grill from the front bumper without having to unmount the whole bumper. You only have to take off the two screws and the four clips on the top.
The centre grill is attached to the front bumper with 20 clips. You have to detach the 20 clips slowly and with lots of patience. If you are in a hurry and use too much brute force, you might break some of the clips.
Well I managed not to brake any !! 🙂
What do you think about it?
I had also planed to change the rear light bar with the blue griffin badge with the newer bar with the SAAB wording, but before I bought the new part I checked what is hiding behind the blue badge.
As you can see there is an embossing behind the blue badge. Too bad, as it would look awkward if I change the blue badge bar with the SAAB wording bar.
This was the first of some updates that are still to come. The Maptun steering wheel is next on the queue.
I love that you wanted the car to be proud of being a Saab and what better way then to have the SAAB across the grille that much larger and visible for all to see….. great job, it looks fantastic.
Beautiful! I have wanted to do the same to my 9-3X for a while and looked for that grill the usual places. May I ask where you got it from?
From the Saab dealer in Kiel, Germany. Don’t know if he still have any.
i want one to that looks awsome
Yepp, looks great!
I’d like to do this on my TurboX, but all its trims are dark grey…
I am finally getting around to ordering a new grill center piece for my 2011 9-3 that I managed to break on my car after a run-in with a Lexus SUV. I understand that there are many of the Griffin edition grills to go around since, of course the 2012 Griffin editions were never mass produced. Do you happen to know the part number? My car is due for service and I wanted to get one ordered when I took it in to the dealer in a couple of weeks.
Yes, I agree. I have a minor scratch on my grill. I like the Griffin grill much better. So, a part number would be nice. Thank you.
I have sent an email to Saab Parts (NA). WE will see if I can order it from the official source.
Sorry to say this, I don’t like it at all. It is like GM is back… with badge engineering.
It could be that I just want my real Griffin to be unique 😉
A few weeks ago I commented on seeing this grille at the Saab Convention in Iowa, in 2012 and it looks even better in the flesh.
Nice work Red J; awesome !!!
I think it looks nice, rather bold but not overpowering.
Red J, I just bought an 08 saab 9-3 sedan in february. I have been wanting to switch out the driver’s side rectangular grill piece because the one it came with is scratched up. From your experience is it possible to take off the driver’s side grill piece without taking the bumper off?
If you take first the middle part, then you might have enough space to take the side grill, But I can’t tell for sure, as I didn’t look how those side grills are fastened.