Saab To Stay Shuttered Through August
After spending much of this year not producing vehicles, Saab is anxious to get to work on its 11,000 vehicle backlog of orders, and production was supposed to start on August 9 after workers return from Summer vacation. But a Saab press release reveals that the troubles aren’t over, with short term financing and supplier agreements still to hammer out, and that production won’t resume until August 29 at the earliest. Gunnar Brunius, Vice President of Production and Purchasing explains:
I am positive about the progress we made on the payment terms with our suppliers and it is good to see that we all want to make it work. What we need now is a full commitment on supply of parts into our factory to be able to restart production and secure a stable manufacturing operation. We are now working hard with our suppliers to nail down these plans, commit to a delivery schedule and start building the close to 11,000 cars that we currently have in our order books. The industry-wide summer break at our suppliers caused certain key suppliers not to be able to supply us in time. Saab Automobile hopes to restart production earliest in week 35 provided that it is able to commit to a delivery schedule with its suppliers.
But wait, there is some good news! Saab’s Communications Manager Eric Geers tells GP.se
I can promise one hundred percent to the salaries paid next week. Where the money comes from is not important, the main thing is that we pay [emphasis added]
That kind of sums up the whole Saab situation nicely, doesn’t it?
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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Where am I going to get parts for my 9-3? The horror....the horror...
The old models were not competitive because they were too similar to their GM platform. The solution was to make the new models more distinctive--which means that if SAAB goes away, goodbye parts bin. And let's face it--even the fanboys think twice before paying 50k for a car that might be worth $20k tomorrow; so the only way to sell new SAABs is at a steep discount--in other words, by losing money on every transaction. So the hope now is...what? That a white knight will cover past debts to incur future losses--and then, as a good sport, sink another billion or two into developing a model range wide enough to sustain a manufacturer? I have driven and loved SAABs. But it's time to pull the plug.
I had wondered what was being done with the V10 9-3. Thumbs up indeed.
I expected this would happen.