BAIC Buys Saab 9-5 Tooling
by
Thor Johnsen
Published: December 4th, 2009
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A few days ago I captured some news from Swedish Aftonbladet.se that Beijing Auto (BAIC) is buying Saab’s now to be replaced 9-5 technology. Even though the Koenigsegg-Saab deal fell apart, and BAIC were a part of the investor group, the Chinese has not given up the idea to build Saabs in China. At the time I couldn’t find any other reports on this, and wondered wether Aftonbladet had done some creative journalism, but yesterday, Nyteknik.se reported the same news, citing their own sources. They’ve even confronted Saab’s spokesperson Gunilla Gustavs, but of course she can not, will not comment on that.
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Exactly. The Chinese are quite capable when the margins are there. IIRC, the Chinese produce most of the worlds solar cells. And a good chunk of the electronics in any device.
VW is famous for moving their tooling around, letting the designs move progressively down market. It makes a lot of sense for a well designed platform to keep being made. Now, in this case, how good a SAAB is made with chinese labour and chinese steel remains to be seen. The BAIC factory won't have near the automation that the Trollhatten had and the raw materials are infamously poor compared to the international standards. I hope Bertel or someone can get a crack at a copy when they enter the market. We now have a standard to compare against. Should be interesting.
I didn't read the article OR the discussion, I just wanted to say that the black haired lady in the beginning of the video was pretty hot. I'd let her torquesteer into my tree any day.
Wasn't the old Saab 9-5 derived from Opel Vectra? If so, shouldn't GM have a say on such transaction?