Overheating on the 2002 Saab 9-5
1 fire 1 of the 2 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 2 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When overheating gets reported
There are 2 reports of overheating on the 2002 Saab 9-5, 2 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 102,000 miles. It is the 8th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 78,643 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 1 a fire is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $400–$3,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure, every year of the Saab 9-5
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
I was driving in traffic when my engine started to stall and lost power. I noticed a burning smell coming from the engine compartment. I pulled the car over and could not re-start it. It was towed to the dealer who diagnosed a failed ignition module. My car is a 2002 saab 9-5 and had been re-called because of failures of this component. However, despite the fact that the car engine was of the type that should have been covered by the recall, when saab notified its' dealers it limited the modules to be replaced to only certain serial numbers. This, despite the fact that according to NHTSA all engines not having the qp3 modification, which my car does not, should have been re-called. Thus, saab refuses to pay for replacement of the part even though it is the same part that was failing and prompted the recall initially. I believe that this is a hazard due to the overheating of the part which LED to stalling and could have started a fire. Saab should not be allowed to limit the serial numbers replaced because other serial numbers appear to have the same defect. *jb consumer called on 9/12/06 to report a second idm failure incident…
I would like to cite NHTSA campaign #05v399000. While driving my 2002 saab 9-5 6 cylinder on 4/20/2006 I began to experience rough operation and reduced power of the engine. I was a short distance from my destination where I parked thinking I would need to be towed. At first I thought my car was overheating because there seemed to be steam coming from under the hood but there was an odd smell. I went into the coffee shop I was visiting and within a minute or two I turned to check on my car and I saw that the interior was filled with smoke. I went outside and noticed sparks and flames coming from under the vehicle in the area of the back seat and I immediately called the fire department. They arrived and put out the fire under the car and in the back seat where the flames had burned through the carpet. I called a tow service and went back into the store to finish my coffee and wait for the tow truck. When I came back out I noticed that there was still smoke coming from under the hood so I called the fire department again to put out the remnants of the fire. The car was then towed to the nearest saab dealer which is in gainesville…
Also reported on the 2002 Saab 9-5
Other electrical problem
Other engine problem
Stalling while driving
Fuel tank, filler or EVAP failure
Seat belt or retractor failure
Engine sensor failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 2 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 2 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does overheating happen on the 2002 Saab 9-5?
Across 2 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 80,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is overheating on the 2002 Saab 9-5?
2 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed