Undeterred that the answer might be 'yes', Saab has preferred to bang on about its jet fighter business and the importance of being 'an individual'. Meanwhile its cars have veered from heroic failures (the rapid but virtually undriveable 9-3 Viggen springs to mind) to close-but-no-cigar machines like the 9-5 Aero - a potent enough steer but unable to take the fight to its German rivals when the chips are down.

The new 9-5s, on sale in September for the same money as the current line-up, mark an important attitude adjustment for the struggling Swedish car maker. Just being different isn't enough. There comes a time, and the time is now, when you have to pull your finger out.

This is a bit more than a routine facelift, then. In fact, Saab has made 1265 changes to the 9-5 - quite a few devoted to brushing up its dynamic act. The four corners of the Saab experience, according to president and chief executive Peter Augustsson, are performance, driving control, safety and design. New 9-5 aims to pick up more accolades for build quality and driving enjoyment, at the same time broadening its appeal - a new 3-litre V6 turbodiesel co-developed with Isuzu should tap into the fastest-growing sector of the executive car market - while continuing to be the safest car in its class.

Reassuringly Saab. Only one model concerns us here, though: the hot one. And the news is good. In Saab-speak, HOT stands for High-Performance Output 2.3-litre Turbo, which now gets 250bhp (20 more than before) and a new five-speed auto 'box option capable of handling the four-pot motor's mighty 258lb ft of torque. Saab isn't known for wild exaggeration so the claims of 152mph and 0-60mph in 6.9secs for the manual Aero should easily be on.

Its styling still doesn't reflect its performance, though. The nose has been stretched and smoothed to accentuate the gentle wedge attitude of the profile, but it's still more home counties cruiser than hunter-killer. The new ten-spoke 17in alloys are too elegant to bump up its modest meanness quotient and the re-styled grille looks curiously Nissan Almera-like. Behind clear headlight lenses is a new bi-xenon lighting system which, if the claims are true, is even brighter than Donny Osmond's teeth while, inside, the Aero's trim strikes the right note of steely resolve amid all that ergonomic exactitude and leading-edge safety design.

Saab's engineers say they were chasing an altogether tauter feel with the chassis mods: sharper responses, crisper turn-in and greater steering precision. The result is a stiffer, lighter front subframe and extensively revised spring, damper and anti-roll bar rates. ESP (Electronic Stability Programme) is seen for the first time on a Saab, too, and is standard on the Aero.

Our test route, in southern Sweden, pauses at an airfield on which a slalom and high-speed swerve manoeuvre have been set up to demonstrate the skid control's effectiveness. As always, ESP is at its best smothering the ragged behaviour of a poor chassis. The 9-5's is now better than that.

Back on the road, it's obvious the new Aero's impressively effortless torque-biased stonk is both more pliantly and accurately deployed than before. Despite what feels like a small amount of engineered-in numbness about the straight-ahead in a bid to quell torque steer, there's still a trace of rim tugging in the lower gears. But corners can be attacked with greater conviction because of the enhanced front-end bite and control. The degree of flow and fluency previously missing from the 9-5's repertoire is welcome, too - remarkable, really, when you consider how much power the front wheels have to cope with and, indeed, how quickly the Aero tends to arrive at bends.

Build, equipment and value have all been moved along to sharpen showroom appeal and add a dimension of immediacy to the traditionally slow-burning Saab package. It's the right thing to do because this is the best and most roundly talented Saab yet.