Friday, December 18, 2009

The Saab Saga Continues



Like Opel and Saturn before it, Saab is proving very difficult for G.M. to unload, and the Swedish icon may soon disappear.

Nelson D. Schwartz of The New York Times reports:
Unable to find a buyer for Saab after a year-long search, General Motors said Friday that it would begin shutting down operations at the Swedish carmaker.

G.M. had been in final sales negotiations with a Dutch maker of high-end sports cars, Spyker Cars, but issues arose during the due diligence process that made the sale impossible before G.M.’s Jan. 1 deadline, the company said in a statement.

“Despite the best efforts of all involved, it has become very clear that the due diligence required to complete this complex transaction could not be executed in a reasonable time,” the president of G.M. Europe, Nick Reilly, said.


1 comment:

  1. Trollhattan... the new Flint.

    Trollhattan is the city in Sweden where Saab was built. There are articles today in the Swedish press about how the city revolved around GM and now there is no work and the city will inevitably see a large exodus.

    It will be interesting to see how the local and national governments in Sweden handles this versus what happened to us here in Flint.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.