Trouble in Trollhättan

No matter what happens between now and the end of the year, it’s coal in the stockings of Saab Automobile employees for Jul. They may need it to get through this winter.

A tumultuous year at Saab Auto was capped off last week with the announcement by General Motors, the Swedish company’s parent, that it would wind down Saab Auto’s operations after failing to strike a deal with Spyker Cars, the Dutch custom manufacturer of sports cars. Spyker came back over the weekend with a revised bid for Saab, and it still may reach an agreement with GM to save the jobs of 3,500 Saab employees.

GM signaled at the outset of the year that it planned to cast off Saab due to the brand’s reduced sales and GM’s massive financial troubles. Saab Auto went into court-supervised bankruptcy reorganization in February, more than three months before GM itself sought protection from creditors.

GM struck a deal with an investor group led by Koenigsegg Automotive in June to buy Saab, but the deal was highly conditional on obtaining financing from the European Investment Bank and loan guarantees from the Swedish government. When that financing failed to come together, the Koenigsegg deal was called off in November. Enter Spyker. The Dutch company may have the cash to complete the transaction, but it is indirectly controlled by a Russian oligarch,  Alexander Antonov, who was mysteriously wounded by gunmen in Moscow earlier this year. Not the most savory of potential buyers, but in these miserable times for the automotive industry, GM will take money from just about anyone.

Saab Automobile may yet survive. Don’t bet on it, however.

~Photo by Joe Ngo, used under a Creative Commons license.