Saab 96
After 64 years of making cars and 9 months of a fruitless effort to find financing to keep the company going, Saab today was declared bankrupt by a Swedish court. Swedish Automobile NV CEO Victor Muller filed for bankruptcy after former Saab owner General Motors indicated that it would exercise its veto power over any of the proposed plans to save Saab. GM owns key intellectual property that any ongoing Saab business would necessarily use. Following the GM announcement over the weekend, proposed Saab savior Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile announced that it was withdrawing from the deal to provide the three quarters of a billion dollars needed to restart production in Trollhattan.
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When he’s not busy doing custom machine embroidery at Autothreads Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth and contributes to The Truth About Cars and Left Lane News
GM ruined Saab when they bought them in 94, they became nothing more than overpriced Opels.
A pity. At its best — the Seventies and early Eighties — SAAB made terrific cars: visually unique yet appealing; ergonomically thoughtful; fun to drive; economical for the performance and comfort they offered. I owned two 900-series SAABs made in those years, and I miss them terribly.
Good-bye, Svenska Aeroplan Abteilungen. It was great while it lasted.
Too bad. I really like the Saab we owned a few years ago. Handled great, practical, and different enough to make it really fun. GM screwed up the brand very badly.
Unfortunately, the Saab was destroyed in an accident and the dealer could not replace it with a similarly equipped (manual transmission) car.
So Government Motors can’t produce decent cars itself, and prohibits another company from trying to do so? What a surprise.
SAAB died a long time ago – this is just another nail in the coffin.
I’ve been working on them for 25 years. It’s been a real roller coaster the last several months. I just want to thank Victor Muller for trying.