In a Post-Bankruptcy World, Hunting the Elusive Saab Bargain LOS ANGELES - However disheartening the circumstances that lead a business to declare insolvency, we consumers tend to register the brightly colored signage heralding a going-out-of-business sale and think primarily one thing: I can get stuff dirt cheap. With Saab's recent bankruptcy and liquidation woes, the Internet has been ablaze with reports of consumers buying Saabs at pennies on the krona. Even the collection of the Saab Heritage Museum, consisting of more than 100 cars and such choice artifacts as the 1947 prototype that spawned an entire car company, was secured for a relative song this week. But I wasn't looking for the Ursaab; I was looking for verification. Were there remarkable deals to be had on a 9-5 sedan, or maybe a 9-4X crossover, albeit without any hope of a factory warranty? Entertaining my "Charlie's Angels" and "Get Smart" fantasies, I coaxed my hair into a Farrah Fawcett tribute, imagined that my right shoe contained a clandestine phone and began to dig. Searches on various car-shopping Web sites for Saab dealers in my area yielded listings for dealerships that had already closed or were functioning only as service centers. The official Saab consumer site was the most accurate source for sales locations, generating two dealers within an hour's drive of my home. On the Web site for Saab of Beverly Hills, a property of the Martin Automotive Group, I found an enticing advertised special that fed the fantasy: "Our entire 2011 new model inventory is now on sale!" The store was offering up to $12,000 cash back on a 9-5, or $8,000 on a 9-3. The Web site of the Symes Automotive Group, a multibrand Pasadena dealership identified as Symes Saab on the Saab site, contained two Saab-related links, one of which was dead. The other routed me to the Symes Saab Facebook page. A trip to Pasadena would be on my itinerary as well, then. I drove first to Martin Automotive, where I was met by a sales and leasing consultant. The three remaining Saabs on the property were nicely kitted 9-5 models. Would more be coming in? "What I have is what I've got," my consultant said. Printed on the window sticker were the words, "No warranty, as-is," a reflection that Saab, in light of its December bankruptcy, would no longer offer warranties on new cars. Though I knew this, I asked the sales representative what the message printed on the sticker meant. He said that only a used Saab would be covered by a warranty, serviced by General Motors, Saab's former owner, and that I could not purchase any protections for a new model. Even so, this had not been "a turnoff" to shoppers, he said. With these trivialities out of the way, I inquired about the carrot that brought me there, the $12,000 incentive for a 9-5. "I didn't even know about it," he said, noting that it must have been a new program. How about leasing? "No, cash only," he said. "There is no lease program, because of the situation right now," he added, without having to say "bankruptcy" to illustrate his point. Undeterred, I visited Symes in Pasadena. A sales associate and I walked outside to view the few Saabs in stock. The cars weren't so much on display as they were grouped together in a corner, noses in, like penalized school children taking a timeout. When I expressed concern about the as-is condition in which the vehicles were offered, the associate introduced me to another associate, who explained that Symes" 2011 Saab models actually carried a four-year, 50,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty through Allstate, but without free maintenance. The new associate was not aware of any impending inventory shipments. "We're just selling what we have," she said. Again, leasing was out of the question, as they had been unable to find a bank that would carry a lease, she said. The associate was more reticent on the subject of pricing. "All deals are case by case," she said, noting that she had received calls from shoppers claiming that discounts of $20,000 to $30,000 were being given online. "But it's just not true," she said. Beginning to think that the fire-sale reports were shaky, I called Tim Colbeck, the outgoing president and chief operating officer of Saab Cars North America, to get a sense of the sales landscape. That American subsidiary recently announced that it, too, would be liquidated. "It's not so much the bargain hunters right now that are going out, but I think loyal Saab owners who are looking to get their last Saab," Mr. Colbeck said. There are about 2,200 vehicles currently in dealer inventory, Mr. Colbeck said, as well as some cars in port, but even in the current sales environment dealers aren't expected to cut drastic deals. "One of the key things that we all have in mind is that nobody wants to go and dump cars into the market and potentially create devaluation," Mr. Colbeck said. "One piece of good news for the dealers is, last week we were able to restart the parts flow to them" after nearly a month of parts deliveries floating in limbo. The reticence to create devaluation may indicate the esteem in which Saab executives and dealers continue to hold the company, however bleak the current picture. The associates I met were optimistic about Saab's future, each saying that this was not the end of the brand. The question is, as Maxwell Smart might have put it, "Would you believe?"