Saab Sale: Does Koenigsegg Have a Card Up Its Sleeve?
Bård Eker, the Norwegian partner in Koenigsegg Automotive, and Koenigsegg Group, appeared as one of the guests on Friday night’s regular Swedish/Norwegian talk show “ Skavland” this weekend (the following, translated conversation starts at 27:09). Mr Skavland, first talking a bit about Eker’s feelings about the broken deal, and how he felt visiting Trollhättan talking to Saab employees after the deal broke, he then asked Eker: “Is there a tiny chance you’ll try again? Saab isn’t sold yet…!” Eker smiles and answers “…we’ll see. Maybe!” laughing, shrugging his shoulders, audience cheering. Skavland: “how would you wanna do it?” Eker: “I don’t know…Seriously – we haven’t given it much thought. We’ll see…perhaps there’s a new opportunity. Maybe someone’ll give us a phonecall” Skavland: “So it’s not definitive that you’re out of the game?” Eker – laughing, glancing at his watch – “..err..how long is this show?” Skavland says: “So, you’ll still want a Saab?”, Eker: “yeah, sure” Skavland: “Alright….?” and shifts to another subject. All the while Eker has a cunning smile on his face.
Now, what does this mean? Was the entire plug-pulling just another negotiations poker-play from KG? A way of getting the Swedish Government more involved? They’ve been quite ambivalent up until KG broke the deal, now they’ve sent representatives to meet with GM and plead for their precious Saab. Even though, as some in comments earlier mentioned, the “Scandinavian way” is not to save the business, but rather save the employees – no government likes watching a small community loosing their corner stone business. Or maybe Eker just loved the attention and the opportunity to make himself interesting. Which I doubt. I think they’re up to something.
More by Thor Johnsen
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The reason there are few comments may be that the login is acting up. It was for me. With the tooling for the new 9-5 being shipped to China, and GM ready to wind down the brand, Konigsegg's only option may be to buy the Trollhattan plant and get government financing to build high-priced, high performance cars that may or may not be called Saabs, keeping the Trollhattan workers employed. That may have been Konigsegg's business plan anyway, and it would be cheaper to pick up the necessary pieces than take over the brand's older tooling, dealer network and liabilities.
It's the tooling for the existing 9-5, not the new one, that was sold to BAIC. Maybe Koenigsegg really only got into it for the publicity alone - some recent reports on their cars were less than complimentary - i.e. short of a Veyron, there is nothing else that is as poor an automotive investment as a Koenigsegg (a recent Evo supercar ownership article gave it a complete thumbsdown on every single count) - which is saying something.