Saab gone?

[The Hypno-Toad]

News coming out of Sweden tonight would seem to suggest that the production line in Trollhatten has been shut down. The Swedish government are saying that they haven't recieved any customs duties for months and want the money and are not letting any parts deliveries out of the docks.
Saab are saying that that the government has not asked them for the money and that if they do officially ask they will get paid. (This is what is becoming to be known as "the football club defence". Make sure you don't pay any taxes or VAT because if the C&E take you to court it looks like the government are trying to close your beloved football team/car company?). They are also saying that the real reason for the shutting down of the line is that GM have raised the prices of the parts against contractual agreed prices.

Saab filed for the Swedish equivlent of Chapter 11 last week (Kept that quiet.)

The Swedish government said that there is no money for a bailout last week.

Their advertising agency has not been paid since December. (which could explain the lack of anything about the 9-5 estate.)

Victor Mueller seen jumping on a flight to Switzerland with a large bag of euros.....

Gone?

Edited by The Hypno-Toad on Tuesday 29th March 22:05

[The Hypno-Toad]

Actually don't worry its all ok. One of the Saab fan sites is reporting that nice Uncle Victor says its just a glitch in the accounts computer and everyone will be paid shortly.

So that's alright then.

I've heard very strong rumours that there are large dealerships in the UK who have delivered less than 30 new retail cars in the first three months of this year. How is that sustainable?

[The Hypno-Toad]

Seemingly the most up to date and informative article about the current issues.

http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2011/03/30/saab-autos-...

Oh dear.

Also the advertising agency were not unpaid, they were sacked according to whoever is running Saab at this moment & they are now claiming they weren't paid as part of an ongoing dispute.

Some Saab fans are now claiming that because Richard Branson was once seen driving an ethanol powered 9-5 and this Antonov gangster geezer once met him at a party, Virgin are about to invest. Talk about clutching at straws.

[The Hypno-Toad]

jake15919 said:

How to run a business. (A guide for the modern tt.)

1 Run up bills and buy stock. Do not pay taxes etc.
2 Put company into bankruptcy/receivership.
3 Wipe out all debts.
4 Get rid of staff with no redundancy costs.
5 Buy back company assets for peanuts.
6 Rehire desperate former employees on a fraction of what you used to pay them.
7 Laugh your cock off.

Not that I'm suggesting for one minute that this is the case with Saab.

Not that I would like to suggest that they might be running it under this model either.

Running a car company the ROVER way.

1.) Claim to be able to turn around failing carmaker.
2.) Recieve huge amounts of EU/government money to help.
3.) Pay yourself a very tidy wage out of said funds making sure that your mates get nice big consultants fees.
4.) Promise the world with regard to new models.
5.) Facelift all the old ones.
6.) Make sure that you don't pay any taxes so that when it all goes wrong and the government want their money you can claim they are the bad guys & are trying to close you down.
7.) Go bust owing large sums to various suppliers who then go bust with you.
8.) Walk away, washing your hands, saying not my fault: Under investment by previous owners, changing market place, hidden debts, no help from government.
9.) Fly away somewhere sunny.
10.) Relax.

Not that's whats happening to Saab of course.

Did anyone else spot that the company in the UK who Spyker sold the sportscar arm of their company to is actually owned by one of the directors of Saab/Spyker...

[The Hypno-Toad]

Update.

Saab have asked for part of the EU "overdaft" that they and GM negoitated as part of the sell off. They would appear to be taking 140million euros out of the 400million fund that they have. In running a car company, anyone got any idea how long that would last? I wouldn't have a clue.

The company that make the dashboards for Saabs have now refused to deliver any more parts claiming they haven't been paid.

There is a theory going around the Mueller is trying to push the company to the brink of collapse so that his mate Antonov has to be let in with a large amount of capital to save the day. Who can say?
But I now think there is a more pressing issue. How much longer is the dealer network going to put up with this? They're not selling any cars. There is no new product on the horizon and unless someone finds a couple of billion there won't be. There is no manufacturer advertising to tell anyone about the products they actually have or in the 9-5 Estates case have just recieved. Lot of people still think Saab went bust at the time when GM sold them to Spyker. With all this bickering and non-payment of bills & their long standing CEO quitting last week, who is there to sort this mess out? Mr Mueller would seem to be strangely silent.

Some of the posts on here, mainly to do with the supposed interest of Richard Branson are priceless;
http://www.saabsunited.com/

"Haven't I seen a picture of Richard Branson driving a Saab 900 Turbo back in the 80s?"
"If Richard Branson does come in, maybe they'll name the Virgin spacecraft the Aero,"
"If Richard Branson does come in, maybe we'll have a Virgin WRC team,"
"If Richard Branson does come in, maybe we can lend him some of our engineers to help out the Virgin F1 team as they aren't doing to well at the moment,"

With regard to the last one: maybe if your engineers were any good, your cars might have been a bit better and possibly you might have sold a few more. And speaking of selling a few more;

"We should stop discounting the cars so much, its de-valuing the brand,"

God bless those boys & girls on that site but they really do sound like the bunch of people running round after Brian waving their shoes, "He's the messiah! No, he's the messiah!" Any messiah will do. I really wish I had faith in something, anything as much as those guys do. It does literaly seem like a religion to them. I reckon the majority of CofE members have less faith than them. I must have a big hollow hole at the centre of my soul.

Why am I bothered? Saab was a large part of my life of nine years and I had a lot of fun working with them. Watching the death knells of a once great company makes me very sad. Especially when IMHO the time to do anything about it past a long, long time ago & people just can't accept it. It should have closed when GM called time. The whole Spyker business is just embarassing for all concerned..

Edited by The Hypno-Toad on Thursday 31st March 17:38

[The Hypno-Toad]

Fittster said:

So they sold 3 cars in Jan and 10 in March.

Not quite. In the first two months of the year they increased the number of vehicles registered but not neccesarily sold by 189%!!!

Up from 212 to 612...

To put that in some form of perspective.

Audi: 12085
BMW: 12303
Merc; 7856

Ok maybe thats a little unfair, I mean those were the companies they used to be in competition with. Maybe we should look at;

SEAT; 3220
Skoda: 4751
Volvo: 2856

ahh ok....

but the good news is!
Lexus: 542
Infiniti: 46

Sad. But then again those Lexus figures are also gob smackingly bad, though I suspect not for long with the hybrid Kylie coming.

[The Hypno-Toad]

Slade Alive said:

There's so much rubbish in this topic I'm amazed many here aren't working and running Saab themselves they seem to know or have all the answers.

Saab a Vectra, do me a favour. It's a shared platform which is little more than a modified floor-pan and few shared brake and suspension components.

Saab's convertible outsold ALL its UK rivals put together. Likely still is.

You would think Saab built a bad car. Fact is, they don't, and never have. I'm all ears if anyone thinks they know of one. And no I'm not interested in personal taste or preference. That's not what I'm talking about.

"Personal taste or preference" is always a difficult one to define but as an ex-Saab salesman I think its safe to say that the 1994 onwards 900 2.0i was a bit of a barge, especially in the Convertible form and the original 9-5 diesel 2.2 auto? was too. The Viggen was a totally out of control death machine but some people really loved it. Scared the living crap out of me on country roads. Still wonder where the rumoured couple of million went that Saab paid TWR to develop the front suspension went.

However: 9-5 3.0tdi V6, 9-5 Aero Auto (250hp), old shape 9-3 Aero 3drs, lovely cars.

All IMHO of course.

But as I have said on here a number of times Saabs downfall was caused by a lack of a halo car. What you do is you create a proper cool sports car (in Saabs case call it a Draken, Speedster or even Sonnett.). The young people come in and hopefully buy it. They then get married, get pregnent and if they've liked it, chop it in for a child friendly estate. Its exactly what Audi did with the TT. Its not really marketing rocket science.
Of course GM never gave Saab enough money to develop such a car but they didn't need to. They could have given Saab the VX220 where it could have become Saabs halo car but no thought the GM bigwigs. Lets give it to Vauxhall & get Griff Rhys-Jones to advertise it in his underpants.
I stand to be corrected but I think that the turbo engine that found its way into that car was basically developed by Saab anyway.

Or to put it another way, giving Saab the VX220 wouldn't have harmed the company and would have probably got them a damn sight more publicity and a bigger image boost than it did to Vauxhall.

Image boost+publicity, usually = sales. Just ask Audi.

[The Hypno-Toad]

And there's more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-11/spyker-sa...

I have a sneaking feeling Rover did this one too. So if Saab miss one payment, Mr Antonov can close the whole company down, get himself some nice building land in Sweden and ship all the tooling to either Russia or China.

Sweet deal.

[The Hypno-Toad]

Autocar have now picked up the story.

http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/...

Seems the production line has been stopped now for over a week and won't be able to be restarted for a week after they recieve any extra funding, whenever that might be. They must be losing a fortune not being able to fulfill orders. The Swedish Finance Minister has basicaly said on TV last night, no more money from them until Spyker produce a sound, thought out business plan.

[The Hypno-Toad]

DonkeyApple said:

The global downturn must have hit architects and people with beards harder than we thought.

All the architects and lawyers started buying Audis a looonnnngggg time ago. That's one of the many problems.

[The Hypno-Toad]

DonkeyApple said:

The Hypno-Toad said:

All the architects and lawyers started buying Audis a looonnnngggg time ago. That's one of the many problems.

Surely, this would make them the the ultimate car for anyone needing to drive through an English town centre at night?

That explains why the Liverpool dealer is doing so well

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a... that time of year again - fat Scouse women at Aintree..

[The Hypno-Toad]

The Hypno-Toad said:

Autocar have now picked up the story.

http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/...

Seems the production line has been stopped now for over a week and won't be able to be restarted for a week after they recieve any extra funding, whenever that might be. They must be losing a fortune not being able to fulfill orders. The Swedish Finance Minister has basicaly said on TV last night, no more money from them until Spyker produce a sound, thought out business plan.

Right back on the important stuff.

Spyker sent the Swedish government their business plan today, which would suggest that cashflow is very, very low. It would appear that the loan will be backed up by the sale of both the factory and the parts business to a foreign investor and then Saab will rent these facilities back. The Swedish Government will need to approve both the loan and the foreign investor, who I would guess is Antonov.(The same person that GM insisted had nothing to do with the original Saab buy-out.)

From the sound of things Saabs future is in the hands of the Swedish Government & will be decided in the next 48hrs.

[The Hypno-Toad]

Latest update:

The Swedish Government are going to let Saab sell their factories and parts business to a new company called Saab Ocean Finance Saab Automobile AB Properties. The boss of this new company is, as suspected Mr Antonov. The Swedish Government are still investigating him but if given the all clear will allow him to buy 30% of Saab as well. But there are two major road blocks still to be crossed.

1.) Antonov's money must be transfered from a bank that isn't owned by him.

2.) And as large proportion of the freed up funds will have to go to the European Investment Bank to pay off existing debt, they have to approve the deal too.

However the Government have been nice to Saab and allowed them a small payment of 30 million euros in order to pay off some short term debts (like the dashboard manufacturers) to allow them to get the production restarted on the 24th and I'm guessing to help them make payroll at the end of the month.

Will it pay for enough publicity to launch the 9-5 Estate properly? No.

Will let them buy the tooling for the old Mini to make the new 9-2? No.

Will this deal get them through til the end of the year (if it goes ahead?) Maybe.

Are they out of the woods and into the gingerbread house? No. Not by a long chalk.

[The Hypno-Toad]

Latest update.....

& if I have read the Google translation right the news is bad; very,very,bad.

The EIB have said fine you can sell the factories to Antonov, no worries but by the way we want the money we have previously lent you back.....

all 400 million euros......

within 90 days.....

Otherwise known as they have to sell the factories to Antonov for more than 400 million euros (or find 400 millon euros from someone else) or you're bankrupt.

Even if they do sell the factories to Antonov for that amount all that will mean is that they will have got the EIB off their back. How are they going to pay wages? Or the suppliers that are still owed millions? Or the taxman? If they had managed to keep the EIB line of credit going they might have made it. Now?

Its looking like they're long gone, buddy.

[The Hypno-Toad]

Slade Alive said:

Isn't this just EIB protecting what they have - assets, I.P, technology, etc, and a workforce to support. If the Russian wants, seems EIB want the Russian to put up double, and why shouldn't he? Anything less is raping Saab. Squeezing the Rusky seems like the right thing to do. He can afford to buy assets he can afford the rest too - seems logical it's a full fat deal and understandable EIB don't want half fat with their half souring for nothing - or acting as a buffer to the Rusky investment.

Its just crazy how many theories and counter theories there are running about.

As far as I can see the whole point in selling the buildings and parts to Antonov was to pump some liquidity into the company. If the EIB basically decide to take all that cash to pay off the debt, how are Saab then going to pay any bills? Especially when the line of credit that EIB has set up is then also being withdrawn. So if the EIB get their way Saab will be at year zero, no debt to the EIB but 0.00 in the bank. Where is the money to continue running the company going to come from?
Spyker? No.
The Swedish Government? No.
The EU? No.
Antonov? Unless he has a couple of billion down the back of his sofa, no.
Henry, the mild mannered janitor? Could be!

The only way they could get other funds is from sales. They are at a standstill and remember so is the production line, it has been stopped now for nearly a month. Without money coming in for delivered cars they can't pay the suppliers they owe money. Without the suppliers parts, they can't build the cars to get the money.
If you were a parts supplier to Saab at the moment, you really would want cash on delivery. So no cash, no parts, no cars.

Big trouble.

[The Hypno-Toad]

The latest update is that the information on the conditions of the offer was leaked by Antonovs Swedish representative. The EIB, while not denying the conditions, are refusing to comment on any future financial agreement until the deal is done. At the moment, the production line will not be starting tomorrow.

Related to this, is the news that deliveries of the 9-4x which were due to start in the states in June have now been put back to July.
Just another genius example of GMs mis-management of the Saab brand. One of their last decisions was to greenlight the production of that car, which is basically a rebadged Chevy, onto a marketplace which at the moment is crying out for another small 4x4 which is available in petrol only and gets 24-29mpg. Its other unique selling point is that it is being built in that home of quality manufacturered goods, Mexico.

I seriously believe that the only reason GM bought Saab was to ruin them.

[The Hypno-Toad]

ALL Saab staff have been told to report to the factory at 07.00 tomorrow morning for an important announcement from Mr Antonov & Mr Muller.

My guess would be; "We can't affford to keep the factory open at the present time. Please collect your calenders, family pictures, jokey coffee mugs and gonks & if we get the money to re-open we'll give you a call,"

I don't know for sure but I think we might have seen the last Saab come down the production line.

[The Hypno-Toad]

RedLeicester said:

Where are you getting this info Toad?

Easy to find on the net if you have a look around.

The announcement was that they are now engaged in 'Plan B', which is to go forward without any extra funding from the EIB and getting outside sources to pump money in to not only to regain liquidity but to pay off the EIB debt. So I would imagine that would be in the region of 750 million euros to get them past the summer, let alone introduce any new models.

I'll be interested to hear who's got that sort of loose change lying around at the moment.

The staff have been told to prep the production line to re-start 'in a few days' and to change the tooling for the new Model Year
In other news, two of their suppliers have said that they will be closing production lines and laying people off unless they recieve payment from Saab by the end of the week.
The curtain is still to drop on this farce.

[The Hypno-Toad]

I'm just amazed that this isn't getting more coverage in the British media. Which, on reflection, is probably quite good news for the UK dealer network.

[The Hypno-Toad]

More...

Antonov has now been approved to become a shareholder of Saab. How much money he is putting in has yet to be determined. However, Saab have now "re-entered" discussions with the EIB, three days after saying they didn't need them anymore.

I would agree with the comments about the new 9-5. I've seen two; one white, one black. What I have seen is page after page of pre-reg 9-3s on Saab Citys website.

And still it rolls on. Who needs soap operas?