Saab United is urging everyone to write e-mails to Ed Whitacre, CEO of GM, telling him to sell Saab rather than kill it off. I would like to join the folks over there in trying to help Saab by asking that all our readers write a brief, polite and passionate e-mail, telling Mr. Whitacre to sell Saab.
Today is Saab’s last battle for life, as General Motors reconsiders their decision with the Swedish government influencing them and Spyker making a new offer.
It looks like Spyker isn’t the only party who wants Saab alive. Motor Trend reports that the Swedish government is going to hold emergency meetings with officials from GM to try and save Saab.
After General Motors has announced that it was set to kill the Saab brand, it seems that the last bidder who was left in the game, Spyker Cars, has made the American giant a new offer to try to secure Saab’s future. Spyker CEO Victor R. Muller said today that a new offer has been submitted to GM with the 11 points that prevented Spyker for taking Saab last time being reconsidered. They are very confident that they have removed any obstacle that stood in the way of the transaction the last time therefore hoping no problems will arouse this time.
Yes, unfortunately, the deal between Saab and the last remaining bidder left in the running, Spyker Cars, could not be made. As a result, General Motors, the owners of Saab, have decided to axe the Swedish manufacturer.
With Saab struggling to stay alive, they are now resorting to selling some things to other companies. They have sold the tooling and rights for the pre-2006 Saab 9-3 and the previous generation Saab 9-5 (Pictured above) to Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Corporation (BAIC), one of the companies in the running for buying Saab.
Spyker is now apparently GM’s preferred bidder for Saab. General Motors says that their preferred buyers fits the following: they are well versed in small scale car production and they should be interested in keeping production in Saab’s homeland, Sweden. Spyker fits those requirements nicely. They also say their preferred buyer has been mentioned by press before, and Spyker has been.
There is a bit of trouble though. If General Motors can’t sell Saab by 2010, they will shut it down. If negotiations are well under way but a deal hasn’t been sealed by January, General Motors may be willing to keep Saab running a little longer while they complete a deal. Maybe. Now, if Spyker were aware of this deadline, maybe everything would be fine, but it is being said that Spyker is, or was up until now, unaware of it. Hopefully everything will go down just fine and Saab will live on.
Netherlands-based manufacturer Spyker is now in the running to purchase Saab. They have released a statement confirming this, which you can see after the jump. Spyker is quite a mad company, and it would be interesting to see what Saabs would be created if they were to take over.
As you may already know from other news sources (We never mentioned this, my apologies), Koenigsegg, who planned to buy Saab, pulled out of the deal. The brand’s future was beginning to look bleak.