Saab Lives! As The BAIC C70

by Bertel Schmitt

Published: November 17th, 2011

While Saab in Sweden is in the emergency room with wires and drips attached, Saab will be back from the dead at the Guangzhou Auto Show. This is when BAIC will show what they have produced from the Saab tooling that they had bought at fire-sale-prices when Saab had gone bust before.

According to Chinacartimes, Beijing’s BAIC will unleash the ghosts of Saab as the C70 sedan. No finished pictures are out, but Chinacartimes offers up some pretty good photoshopped impressions.

#BAIC #BertelSchmitt #C70 #China #Saab #Sweden

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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Saab_lurker on Nov 17, 2011

I guess GM had no issue letting that technology go to China?

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- ToplessFC3Sman on Nov 17, 2011
  
  The tech in the current generation 9-3 is quite old (pre 2003), plus Saab developed its own unique radio/information/CAN/Engine Control etc technology & programming. Nothing in the car is state of the art at this point, or has been for at least 5 years. The problem with it currently is that GM does NOT want to piss off their chinese partners SAIC & BAIC by essentially giving away a lot of current knowledge, architecture & tech to a competitor. Plus, the 9-5 & 9-4X are thoroughly modern GM vehicles and could potentially pose a threat now.
  
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- Dreadnought on Nov 17, 2011
  
  @toplessFC3Sman So why didn't GM wait, instead of butchering Saab piecemeal, making any future sale of the whole company to the Chinese impossible. Seems as though Ford didn't have a problem with selling shared architecture in the form of Volvo to the Chinese.
  
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CJinSD on Nov 17, 2011

It looks like a VW Eos sedan. Morbid curiousity had me follow Bertel's links to Saabsunited where I found the new Cadilyack XTS billed as a 9-5 sibling. Maybe Saab dealers should buy some XTSs and some Saab badges. Other than contractual issues, what would be the difference?

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- Saab_lurker on Nov 17, 2011
  
  Good idea. Maybe Lexus dealers could do the same with Toyotas.
  
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