Saab Officially Flatlines

by Cammy Corrigan

Published: January 11th, 2010

Between the tooling for the old Saab 9-5 being shipped off to China and GM “starting” the wind down process, even the most optimistic, “fuel tank is half full” members of the auto world are starting to think that it’s “game over” for Saab. Well, here’s the final nail (barring a completely audacious bid, from an equally audacious company, who want to spend millions of pounds on a damaged brand) in the coffin of Saab. The Local, a Swedish website, reports that GM are officially killing all plans to bring the new 9-5 to production. “It would be so sad that it never sees the light of day despite the fact that it’s a fantastic car,” admits GM vice chairman Bob Lutz.

Commenting on the suggestion that the 9-5 could come back as a Buick, Bob Lutz showed the world why he’s goes by “Maximum.” “No, that’s completely wrong. It’s not going to be a Buick. Not in the United States, not in China and not anywhere else,” he says. Ok, Bob! Don’t blow a gasket (insert GM reliability joke here). I mean, it’s not as if Buick are going use any rebadged cars, are they? The article states that “according to Lutz, GM would rather shut down Saab Automobile than sell it to a company the US auto giant didn’t believe in.” Or, as Lutz puts it, “we’ve pushed the wind down button and now we intend to wind down the company.”. But Lutz, being Lutz, couldn’t leave it at that. This is a man who said that “Global warming is a crock of s***,” “Hybrids don’t make sense,” “We meet or beat (imports’) reliability or in the case of Toyota, even been turned upside down” and that anyone wanting to spend money on Nissan (when it was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy) would better stick it on a ship, sail it into the sea, then sink it. So, given those quotes, how did Bob Lutz choose to give Saab its final send off?

“If you want to earn a small fortune on Saab, you have to start with a huge fortune.”

If all of this weren’t enough to convince you that Saab’s near-death experience has officially become a death experience, Ed Whitacre confirmed it to Reuters at the Detroit Auto Show, saying “we’re closing down Saab.” “Rather an end filled with terror than terror with no end,” explains Bob Lutz. How much more explicit can it get? Good thing we’ve already said our goodbyes…

#BobLutz #China #EdWhitacre #Europe #GM #Opel #Saab

Cammy Corrigan

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3 of 29 comments

Fred diesel on Jan 11, 2010

Gee... just like Lutz and the rest of the incompetents at FUGM, very few here can keep their eye on the ball either. Once again Lutz, GOOD FING LUCK selling your V6 and 8 beige spacklemobiles when fuel goes back over $4. And your 4 cylinders aint that hot either. Killing Saab is like killing all the pretty women because weve already got too many ugly ones. The industry over-capacity is in Japan, Korea , USA, Canada, China and Germany by and large...NOT western Sweden.

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Werewolf34 on Jan 11, 2010

What does this do to incentives on new SAABs? Is it possible I can roll down to a dealer and buy one for the price of a new hyundai? That would be an interesting gamble

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- John Horner on Jan 11, 2010
  
  9-3s and 9-5s are selling at $9-$10k discounts off MSRP. Around $26k should get you a mid-trim level 9-3. That is still about $3k more than the selling price of a Sonata V-6 Limited with all the goodies.
  
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