Well this comes as a bit of a surprise. Scandy automaker Koenigsegg,
most well known for making a two-seater supercar of prodigious
performance, has just put the final ink on the contract to buy Saab.
What’s most interesting to us, the gearhead, is that Koenigsegg makes
fast cars, and Saab has been known to make a fast car or two in the
past. So what will the future hold?
General Motors made it official this morning that a consortium
representing Swedish supercar manufacturer Koenigsegg will purchase the
beleaguered Saab unit that GM bought a while back for no clear logical
reason. At the moment, this is “just” a signed a memorandum of
understanding, the big business equivalent of a promise ring, but
barring some huge money problems, the deal is most certain to go
through.
In the short term, this means that officially, Saab will once again
be a fully Swedish automaker, which is good. I don’t like it when Group
Of Rich Guys from Foreign Country “A” end up owning Lotus or Bugatti
or, for that matter, Saab. It’s sort of like an NFL franchise leaving
the city it started in, it just feels wrong.
Jan Åke Jonsson, Managing Director of Saab Automobile AB said, “The
proposed agreement will enable us to maximize the brand’s potential
through an exciting new product line-up with a distinctly Swedish
character. Today’s announcement is great news for Saab’s current and
future customers, dealers, suppliers and employees around the globe,”
Under the terms of the memorandum, signed by all three automakers,
Saab, GM & Koenigsegg, General Motors will continue to provide
architecture and powertrain technology for a “defined time period.”
Which is a polite and legalese way of saying that what is already in
the works will stay on path. So, Saab’s 9-3, the next-gen 9-5 and
forthcoming 9-4x, all products of existing GM technology, will all roll
out as scheduled.
Via a GM-only news release, it was announced that the
next-generation Saab 9-5 will be built in Saab’s Trollhättan, Sweden,
assembly plant. Assumedly Koenigsegg will take possession of that
historic auto plant, which is cool on a number of fronts, most of all
because it’s named Trollhättan.
The deal should be done by Q3 of this year and it’s anticipated that
a $600 million commitment of funding from the European Investment Bank
will also come along with the deal. Saab is putting up some money, but
just how much is unknown at this point, as is the price of the sale to
Koenigsegg.
So this is good news over all. Good news for Saab, good news for Koenigsegg and it is very, very good news for GM
In the past two weeks, GM has: Filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, sold
Saturn to Penske Automotive Group, sold Hummer to Sichuan Tengzhong
Heavy Industrial Machinery in China and offloaded the majority of Opel
to Magna Styer.