Bring A Trailer: Saab's Heritage Under The Hammer

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

Want a piece of “quirky” history? While the good folks at the Church of the One True Saab still have dreams of white knights, Saab’s heritage is being auctioned off. This caught the attention of Bringatrailer.com (“The best vintage and classic cars for sale online.”) In a lengthy piece, the organ for trailer trash collector’s online hub salivates over “the entire collection of 100+ cars belonging to the Saab Heritage Museum in Trollhaettan, Sweden” to the liquidator.

The cars include everything from the 1946 Ur-Saab to recent show prototypes. Complete listing here, in Swedish. A rare collector’s item in itself! 123 pages, 2 pictures per car. Saab history, written by the executioner. Download your piece of Saab history for FREE!

As for the auction, you don’t even need to bring a trailer to drag away your loot. Also on auction are the workhorses of the museum which include an enclosed trailer, and a Saab 9000 back-halved flat-bed hauler.

The cars are auctioned off by the Swedish law firm Delphi. Written bids on the collection, as a whole, or, come on, cheapskate, individually, are requested via mail or fax by this Friday, January 20th. Instructions here.

Place your bids, or do we have to send Steve Lang over there? Come on, didn’t you always wanted to own the concept cars, just as they show them at the car show? Now you can. Their loss, your gain.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Syke Syke on Jan 17, 2012

    Laugh all you want, guys. You've just read about one of the two really depressing bits about the Saab collapse. The other part? Just ask any of the employees who aren't anymore.

    • Krhodes1 Krhodes1 on Jan 18, 2012

      I feel very bad for the US-based employees of Saab. They have lost thier pensions, health insurance, and are now out of work in a terrible economy, and mostly in one of the hardest hit areas of the country. With a government that could pretty much not care less. The Swedes on the other hand, have an excellent social safety net and an economy that is doing quite well, and a Goverment that while not caring to support an unstainable company, will invest in thier citizens. They will be just fine in short order. I assume that most of them have spent the past 9 months that they have been not working (on full pay) figuring out what they were going to do next.

  • Jeff_vader Jeff_vader on Jan 18, 2012

    Interesting stuff going on at The Church Of The One True Saab this morning. As normal there is a load of pie in the sky theories about a merger with Telsa, a major American company coming in and even praise for Youngman, which as they basically negotiated Muller into a position where he couldn't talk to anyone else before leaving his cheese out in the wind on the day of the bankruptcy hearing (no relapse yet Ms Pang? Pleased to hear it.) is rather surprising. And speaking of everyones favourite crazy Dutchman he now seems to have sided himself with the Turkish company Brightwell, issuing what appear to be joint statements with them. But the depth of the naivety on that site about how business works is quite breathtaking. They really don't understand that no one cares anymore, not even the locals of Trollhatten.Still, I guess those Solar Temple disiciples were convinced too. The recievers have just announced that there will be a press conference on Saturday. I'm guessing some of it will be to do with revealing that SAAB AB are taking the brand name back. This one still has a long time to run

  • Jbltg Nope.
  • ChristianWimmer This would be pretty cool - if it kept the cool front end of the standard/AMG G-Class models. The front ends of current Mercedes’ EVs just look lame.
  • Master Baiter The new Model 3 Performance is actually tempting, in spite of the crappy ergonomics. 0-60 in under 3 seconds, which is faster than a C8 Corvette, plus it has a back seat and two trunks. And comparable in weight to a BMW M3.
  • SCE to AUX The Commies have landed.
  • Arthur Dailey The longest we have ever kept a car was 13 years for a Kia Rondo. Only ever had to perform routine 'wear and tear' maintenance. Brake jobs, tire replacements, fluids replacements (per mfg specs), battery replacement, etc. All in all it was an entirely positive ownership experience. The worst ownership experiences from oldest to newest were Ford, Chrysler and Hyundai.Neutral regarding GM, Honda, Nissan (two good, one not so good) and VW (3 good and 1 terrible). Experiences with other manufacturers were all too short to objectively comment on.
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