After many months of agonising negotiations, General Motors and Dutch supercar maker Spyker Cars NV today confirmed that a binding agreement on the sale of Saab Automobile AB has been reached.
“Today’s announcement is great news for Saab employees, dealers and suppliers, great news for millions of Saab customers and fans worldwide, and great news for GM,” said John Smith, GM vice president for corporate planning and alliances.
The GM-Saab-Spyker deal is seen as very much a 12th hour event, seeing as General Motors had already started winding down operations in Sweden, and a much-vaunted deal with Sweden’s Koenigsegg had fallen through months before. Now it remains to be seen how quickly Spyker, a very low-volume producer of quirky supercars, can get Saab back up to speed, and sustain it going forward.
It was announced that as part of the agreement a new company called Saab Spyker Automobiles will be formed. The sale will be subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of applicable regulatory, governmental and court approvals.
Although specific details of the deal remain undisclosed at this point, talk on Autoblog.com suggests Spyker giving GM $74 million up front, along with allowing GM to obtain a further $326 million in preferred shares from the new Saab Spyker Automobiles. The deal apparently also requires that the Swedish government agree to guarantee a 400 million Euro loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
The GM press release states that, “the Swedish government is at present reviewing the transaction and the related request for guarantees of a Saab Automobile loan that has been requested from the European Investment Bank. Assuming quick action, the transaction is expected to close in mid-February, and previously announced wind down activities at Saab will be immediately suspended, pending the close of the transaction.”
Saab recently revealed its promising 9-5 saloon, and this vehicle will be key to the marque’s success going forward. At the moment engineers are known to be working on a station wagon version, and the 9-4X compact crossover has reportedly gone into low-volume production (supposedly crash test and early evaluation vehicles). Sadly, chances of seeing Saab return to South Africa are unlikely – the marque has had a few false starts already.