2008 SAAB 9-3 — Complaint #1079735
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC:POWER ASSIST:VACUUM:HOSES, LINES/PIPING, AND FITTINGS filed June 25, 2014
NHTSA complaint #1079735 (ODI reference 10606072) concerns a 2008 SAAB 9-3 and was filed on June 25, 2014. The owner reports the failure occurred on April 6, 2010. The vehicle had 1,500 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Utah based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as service brakes, hydraulic:power assist:vacuum:hoses, lines/piping, and fittings, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same SAAB 9-3 cohort independently describe similar service brakes, hydraulic:power assist:vacuum:hoses, lines/piping, and fittings failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2008 SAAB 9-3 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
INTERMITTENT BRAKE FAILURE AT START. DEPRESS BRAKES, EITHER FROM DRIVEWAY IN REVERSE OR STARTING FORWARD AFTER LEAVING DRIVEWAY, AND BRAKES DO NOT WORK. DEPRESSING BRAKES FEELS LIKE POWER BRAKING SYSTEM IS NOT ENGAGING. HAVE TO PULL OVER TO SIDE OF ROAD, AND AFTER A FEW MINUTES, BRAKES RETURN. THIS HAS HAPPENED PERIODICALLY OVER THE PERIOD SINCE I BOUGHT THE CAR NEW, DECEMBER 2009. THE CONSUMER EXPERIENCED AN INTERMITTENT BRAKE ISSUE THAT WAS EVIDENT FROM THE FIRST YEAR OF OWNERSHIP. UPON STARTING THE VEHICLE IN THE MORNING, THERE WAS BRAKE FAILURE UNTIL THE VEHICLE WARMED UP SUFFICIENTLY FOR THE PROBLEM TO BE RESOLVED. HE WOULD GENERALLY CATCH THE PROBLEM BEFORE EXITING HIS DRIVEWAY, BUT THERE WERE TIMES THE PROBLEM PERSISTED UPON SHIFTING INTO FORWARD GEAR. THE CONSUMER HAD THE VACUUM PIPE REPLACED. THE CONSUMER REFERENCED NHTSA ACTION NUMBER PE08005, IN WHICH HE BELIEVED WAS CLOSED PREMATURELY. UPDATED 08/27/14
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1079735 |
| ODI Number | 10606072 |
| Date Filed | June 25, 2014 |
| Failure Date | April 6, 2010 |
| VIN | YS3FM57R381 |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.