The end of days for Saab

[mx_tifoso]

If you guys could remain on topic and speak english while doing so great, otherwise not so much.

[xpensive]

Mind you richard, Jaguar only came good after the Dearborn-suits had left, the current management seem far more adept?

What did Saab, other than incompetent GM-suits who did very little but moving their office to Gothenburg, was that they couldn't compete with Russelsheim as European HQ, in particular when the German government opened the chequebook.

[Richard]

Although when we say "came good" we mean producing well engineered cars. None of these brand actually made any money for Ford, BMW or GM.

Jaguar came good when Ford started to manage their prestige car stable as a brand enhancer. While GM seemed to not know how to treat SAAB. It had the overheads of a niche brand with dedicated production lines and R&D, but managed as if they were rebadging Opels. The aspiration of Jaguar or Range Rover, but the implementation of Seat or Skoda.

We'd call it "fur coat but no knickers" in the UK. Impressive on the outside (SAAB badge & heritage) but no substance underneath (an Opel Vectra) http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/all_fur_c ... o_knickers

[Richard]

They've filed for bankruptcy protection.

Interesting that they're selling a 53% stake for E245m, but they plan to use E150m of that to pay creditors . So most of the equity sale is simply trying to cover operational debt.

That Chinese investment pails into insignificance compared to "a net loss of €224m for the six months to end-June, and its balance sheet showed negative equity of €397m at the end of the first half, a figure that exceeded its sales of €359m"


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/53a4796e-d923 ... abdc0.html
and
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14817674

[HampusA]

They just won´t die won´t they
I admire the fighting spirit though,

[xpensive]

Fighting spirit, eh?

They haven't produced a single car for six months for crying out loud, no supplier will ever ship them a bolt without COD!

This is all about looting the company and taxpayers as much as possible.

[HampusA]

Fighting spirit, eh?

They haven't produced a single car for six months for crying out loud, no supplier will ever ship them a bolt without COD!

This is all about looting the company and taxpayers as much as possible.

So what? they have been dying for years and they are still alive.

That´s fighting spirit i don´t care who you are..

looting the company? THEY HAVE NO MONEY.

[Richard]

SAAB took out a mortgage on the factory, plenty more cash where that came from.

We all thought the same about Rover. Unlike SAAB, the "Pheonix 4" managed keep Rover trading for a few years. They mortgaged the property to raise money for long term investment... the trouble is that the money was used to cover operating losses, they didn't develop any new models, and the company slowly suffocated. Somewhere along the line, the directors got bonuses of 10's £m.

[xpensive]

So what? they have been dying for years and they are still alive.

That´s fighting spirit i don´t care who you are..

looting the company? THEY HAVE NO MONEY.

Interesting logic there HampusA, some people would call it inability to think and act realistically however.

[Richard]

Game over. The courts had common sense.... I wonder how long they can drag it through appeals?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14839649

If this had gone ahead then Spyker would have run up more and more debt (and paid themselves management fees). That would have just made the inevitable collapse even bigger, and even more damaging for the Swedish economy due to the government and EIB backed loans, plus the debts owed to other companies.

....

Then you read a blog like this one and wonder "if only ...." http://inside.saab.com/the-deal-and-the-future/

[HampusA]

if you were ‘doing a Lexus’ – creating a luxury/premium arm from nothing – you would most likely commission a study into what that new brand should represent, what its typical clientele would look like, where it should be positioned, etc. After spending those millions of dollars, you would end up with a document that more or less would describe Saab.
This company has an intrinsic value that’s boosted even further by our new products, our modern plant and our excellent technical capabilities. When you’ve got all of those things, you’ve got something you can build on, something that will be of interest.

Are the workers also delusional? SAAB has never been premium, it has never been luxurious, it has never been "it".

Stop living a dream, wake up and smell the coffee.

Unless someone starts unloadning trucks of cash in Saab they will never go anywhere, they will just again, drag out their own death.
It won´t and never will be "ok" again, the market is way to tough.

Assuming i´m not an enthusiast of the brand, why should i buy a Saab?
.....
there really is no reason more then "i like the design".

[Pup]

Then you read a blog like this one and wonder "if only ...." http://inside.saab.com/the-deal-and-the-future/

I don't know - I read that blog and think "no wonder..."

I like(d) Saab - the first car I ever bought for myself was a 900 - but the truth is that they only made two good cars in their history, the classic 900's and 9000's. Everything before was interesting but cheap, and everything after was bland and expensive. Same with what they've got going on now - bland products that do no more than check off all the marketing boxes - they do nothing to inspire. People who buy station wagons - or rather, the incomprehensibly named sport combi coupe - are practical people who care about practical things, like knowing the company they buy their car from will still be in business next week. Staying the course with Saab's GM inspired pipeline was a bad move, and an obvious one at that. They should have pared back their line to the minimum, made some superficial changes to the remaining product line to separate them from the GM and bankruptcy taint, and then set about to find a new direction for the company. Instead, they just kept marching off a cliff with their same old boring products.

Not that I think the company is without passion - I think they've got in in spades. But, I also think they're a bunch of geeks who know nothing of what the real world wants. Their only real success came when their products were being dictated by their US distributor. They needed someone to give them not just money, but focus. Instead they got GM, where Saab's lack of leadership made them easy prey for GM's legendary internal politics. And now they've got basically no leaders at all, just a faceless group of foreign investors who seem to only measure success by the depth of financing they can get.

[Richard]

I see three unions are now applying for bankruptcy.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/ ... FK20110921
http://www.swedishwire.com/business/113 ... -for-saab-

[Richard]

The bankruptcy protection was approved this week, so they're still hanging on. However it is all dependent on a cheque in the post from China.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/974dc540-e449 ... z1Yn5d7RI2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15005472

[nacho]

I like(d) Saab - the first car I ever bought for myself was a 900 - but the truth is that they only made two good cars in their history, the classic 900's and 9000's.

99 was good too plus a looker, a classic, like the 96. For me GM ruined Saab and threw them out, we had 9-3 that was based based on the NG 900 and it was rubbish.

We are now like on the 6th Saab we have, an 82' 900 Combi Coube, a perfect sub-1000€ car. You don't see many '82 Corollas or Asconas or BMW's here but plenty of Saab's that work around the year.