Swedish carmaker's Chinese investors fail to take over former GM company.
Too bad, nice car at one time (Saab 99), but they couldn't compete.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/12...bankruptcy.html

Been hoping against hope that they'd somehow survive. My dad's first Saab was in 1986; he ordered a 9000 Turbo sight-unseen from the first shipment into the US. That was followed a few years later by a new one.

My parents later had a 900 convertible and two 9-5's.

The saddest part is that the new 2011 9-5, despite GM ownership, is probably the best car Saab has ever made. I wonder if the demise of the company means the 9-5's on dealer lots will be sold for peanuts...

What a surprise, didn't see that coming ...

Saab will be missed. Saab and Porsche both looked at car design differently from "the rest of the world."

Sort of like a relative with cancer, you know it's going to happen, but it's still sad when it does.

I am kind of curious.
What happens to the new cars on the carlots?
Do they get sold off by the judge?
Do they get super discounts?

I guess the warantee work would be NADA....but it may be a cheap enough deal to buy one....

Rich

I have 2008 2.0 turbo sport combi. I love it fast and fun to drive.

This is what should have happened to GM and Chrysler. Now we have Government Moters and electric cars that start on fire when the battery goes dead. Nothing wrong with bashing a dying company on the head and putting it out of it's misery.

Yep, fine car. My wife and I had a 95 9000CSE Aero. Had to use cruise control or I'd be running 100mph before I knew it. The turbo was mounted in front of the engine. Such a quite and fast car. I think they've been in bankruptcy before. Hope they emerge OK. Remember they're 2 cycle engine?

I'm surprised, that you guys are surprised...

Saab has always been an "odd" make that does't have mass appeal (not saying they aren't good cars or innovative designers). But they defiantly had a niche market.

There were a lot of bad moves in terms of guidance and leadership at Saab that ultimately led to financial woes they've been battling for the past year or so and it finally all caved in. They'd been stiffing their suppliers for quite a long time and I don't think the manufacturing had been active for a while now either...

Certainly makes me wonder what would have happened here if we weren't busy being Socialists and bailing out US companies in the same boat.

ILBT

I'm spectulating here but I can only imagine the hidden contractual obligations Saab was saddled with from their association with GM. As large as GM was/is they couldn't break free of the financial chastity belt they negociated themselves into. It's very likely some of the bad debt left with Saab last year with the sale hidden in the fine print and GM still couldn't free themselves.

Bash em in the head and let the courts figure it out.

Unless of course your job depends on Chrysler and GM.

Or any company that supplies Chrysler or GM, or any company that supplies any of their suppliers, or any children in the family of anyone who works for any of those companies.

Thus part of the problem - GM in their infinite wisdom tried to take a niche car mainstream, and it backfired like so many other things they did, e.g. their purchase of Fiat and then selling it back at a loss! Who owns Chrysler these days?

But I have to say, it seems the car culture anymore is homogenised, people for the most part don't want a car that is different.

Cool cars back in the day. A maintenance nightmare thanks to low UIOs.

IMHO - cars with character are worth so much more than Toyotas, but what do I know...

All the companies that supplied GM took a hit anyway. All the investors took a huge hit when the law was on their side. Why is it up to us all to take care of everyone because of bad business decisions?

No one ever bailed me out, my employees, their families or my suppliers. I man'd up and took care of my business and everyone that took a chance on me and my big ideas. I had some really hard times. I dug into my soul and found a way to take care of everyone.

Call me heartless if you want but I suffered the results of my decisions as a businessman and came to terms with the decisions I was responsible for. I fixed my problems myself. You can't borrow yourself out of debt and you can't expect people that are forced to take a hit at your expense to respect you.

This isn't Greece. Sometimes we need to take a hit and get it over with rather than drag the entire economy down into the next generation.

If big business is allowed to get away with opporating with no consequences this kind of stuff will never end until we are all like Greece. IMO Saab is a victim of an association with loser like GM.

Well said Rick.

Perhaps you guys need to read what happened to BLMC, shit management, bollocks business decisions and just no idea what to do next.

Cannot save every company, sometimes the arrogance of management astounds me, Lehman brothers for instance..

Studebaker died Saab has died, all I now need is Hyundai to go the same way...

I started with Saab in a Type 96 and loved that car, had three or four others up through the 9000's, then changed to Volvos. I'll miss Saab.


No real argument, but fact is that GM's paying back what it owes, has some better product now, all their supplier companies are still in business and their employees mostly still have jobs. Recession's bad, but if all those company's had all disappeared the decades-long Depression would have been a lot worse. Sometimes you gotta just hold your nose, do what needs to be done, then change the rules of the game (the "regulations") so the leeches can't prosper the next go-round.

Too bad about Saab. Like I said, I've been a fan, but when they started giving up their character they lost a lot of business, even before GM. Unlike the U.S., Sweden is probably just too small a country to support an auto industry without consistently delivering highly desirable cutting edge cars. That's a hard thing to sustain.

Just another Saab story. Same old thing. Save me, save me! How about the innocent stock holders. The investors that put money up in good faith. Who's honoring their right to collect before the union? Who's paying them back? GM? We have laws in this country. Were not Greece, Italy or France.

GM could very easily filed, kept the doors open, reorganized and either moved on or swollowed the bitter pill. That's business. Look what happens when government gets involved where they have no business. AM Trak, the post office to name a few.

Oh, and the new electric nightmare that catches fire when the batteries go dead. There's a product improvement. I hear GM is calling back all those cars. That was a government mandated profit center and green jobs galore.

I still say if you dug into Saabs troubles you would find ugly GM debt that was hidden in the sale through unprofitable contracts with suppliers and dealers. Saab has always had a decent car. Now their just a pawn in a big game of hide the weinee.

IBTB

I had read that GM blocked the sale of SAAB to the Chinese Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co because they did not want GM technology to be passed on to the Chinese company.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45720823/ns/bu...s-chinese-deal/

SAAB made some quirky, but interesting cars in its time.

No one puts up money in "good faith". They put up money to make money, and since risk is involved they attach as many strings as they can, to reduce those risks. Even so it's understood by everyone that it's impossible to eliminate all risk, so the more risk the larger the return, reflected in interest rates or stock values.

But at the end of the day aren't those exactly the people who were responsible? Every year they voted for directors, then the Board they elected hired and overpaid the CEO and management and supervised the work they did. No one made anyone buy GM stock, or made management sign a loan agreement, a union contract, cut corners in research, engineering, design, or whatever. The market's liquid so investors could have walked at any time if they didn't agree with management. And since they hired those idiots aren't they also responsible for the job they did? No one else could have changed the course GM took, so if anyone's responsible it has to be them. Who else?

If you let a large company like GM go under, the wrong people are being punished. The person that installs hood latches all day doesn't have much power in how the company is run but he's the one who will suffer and thousands like him. Many of the pilots I used to work with thought GM should not have been bailed out. When I asked if UPS was going bankrupt (hey it could happen) would they want a government bailout? Of course, that was different. "Ive got mine, pull up the ladder".

That's ok, you as an employee can loose as much money for the company as you want with poor productivity and drunken drug infested lunches under your protective union umbrella. All of us tax payers that took responsability for ourselves will fluff your pillow for you.

If GM was left to fix their own problems as the law provides they would have reorganized as may companies do. If you want to live in a comunist country move to one. There is no garrentee of success here only opportunity. It's up to all of us to handle our affairs. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes were not competitive anymore. That's business. Why do you look at it as someone owes someone something here beyond the laws and constitution?

As I stated I'm a heartless SOB but I owned a couple businesses. I had several employees. I personally suffered along with my business from the economic drought, market shifts and employee productivity issues. It's alot different looking at it from the business side of the check book. You guy's that have your hand in your employers wallet every week need to go out and take a risk and try it on your own. Then you can tell me all about bail outs and personal responsability.

I will likely get a time out for this post. But the guys at Saab know what I'm talking about.

Goverment Morors is the ones that ran SAAB into the ground

When you say "you as an employee can lose as much money for the company as you want." What does that mean? I've been with one union or another all my life and proud of it. I worked my ass off for everyone I worked. "Drunken drug infested lunches"? Do you even have a clue what you're talking about? Unions are so bad? The huge middle class in this country didn't happen on it's own. Where do you think the 40 hour work week came from? Where do you think child labor laws etc. came from? Collective bargaining. That's where. If your business failed, how many thousands of people lost their jobs? Are you comparing your business with GM? Did you set out to be a job creator or a profit creator? Since this is leaning toward the politcal, you can have the last word 'cause statements like "drug infested lunches" aren't even worth discussing.

Rick -
You are not heartless - you are a realist that takes responsibility for your actions. Kudos.

We all make desicions that direct our lives from every angle. If a person puts all his eggs in one basket in any of these decisions, and things go south, it is what it is. Own it. Dont like it? Change it.

I wont delve into my political views pertaining to unions as a whole. However, as a musician, what I have personally experienced in my dealings with that particular union (both locally and nationally) have been so so so bad, immature, unprofessional and truly rediculous. I was actually threatened at 16 years old in a bar right before going on to play by some local. Lets just say that stuck. Playing random shows in Vegas over subsequent decades cemented my opinions. God, then there were the trade shows that I did for my normal day job.

Regardless of what the popular trend is today with the kiddos, we do not all get the same trophy simply for participating when it comes to real life. There is a difference between working hard and working smart. (Elliott, that was not directed at you personally - I have no doubt that you are good at what you do and bust your ass to doing it).

Well we have come half circle from "Ask not what your country can do for you." to "What can the country do for me!"

You can't blame all of GM's trouble on Unions, although they are partly responsible for some issues. You also cannot blame all the trouble on Managment. Both side contributed to the demise of GM.

It's not the Governments job to bailout anyone or company. Allowed to use the courts to restructure could have saved them without the major screwing that occured.

SAAB somewhere in their books probably had lots of GM dept hidden. That must have been a nice Easter Egg to find.

I withhold any statements about unions until we fix Ca. Education system.

Smitty

I have worked in manufacturing, but I have never worked for a union. The sad part is our lovely media only has bad news and there are countless stories about finding beer bottles and poor construction in American cars and airplanes. Sad to say I have only bought one American car and it was a Ford Expedition. I guess that's considered a truck, but it ejected a spark plug out of the head. It had an extended warranty but Ford wouldn't cover it since it wasn't a moving part.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007...park_plugs.html
Because of my experience with Ford and the nasty media, I will be very paranoid to ever trust an American car again.

I forgot to mention that it was a 2003 Expedition with about 70k on the odometer. The spark plugs were installed by the factory. You only change them every 100k. There was another funny article that said the spark plugs change themselves!! A local mechanic said that Ford corrected the problem with a later model head, but since we were so unhappy with Ford not standing behind there product, we just had a helicoil put in and took it over to the Toyota dealer and traded it in on a Sequoia. Our Sequoia has over 200k miles on it and has never left my wife and kids stranded on the side of the road like the Expedition did on several occasions. Its hard to put a price on your family's safety.

I'm not sayin all union workers are slackers but I worked as a welder for a union ship builder and saw it first hand. I don't say things I can't back up.

http://lmliberty.us/2011/11/30/union-worke.../#axzz1hDiUUUww

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKrIhn9RgP8...feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujPLK-CkphM...feature=related

On you dime. Like that? You and me bailed out these guys. We pay their salery, contribute to their unions and big fat pensions. These are the guys we bailed out.

I feel real bad for them now that they showed me how much they appreciated it. When we have real 17% unemployment there are guys that would be happy to stand on a line with sanding mittens on their hands or a power wrench tightening bolts for half what these ingrates make.

GM is simply better at finding investors than your small business(es).

They convinced Uncle Sam that they were a worthwhile investment. Lo and behold, not only was a deeper recession/depression averted, but GM turned out some quality products and Uncle Sam made money on the investment.

I'd much rather see my tax dollars used this way - heck, they earned a positive return - than used to subsidize the world's most profitable industry.

ILBT

But will anything really change in the long run? The American auto industry has been on the ropes since the late 70's, rallyed through a few crisis over the years, sometimes with help from Uncle Sam or labor, but have constantly fallen victim to a lack of learning from their mistakes. I'll be curious to see what happens over the next ten years. RIP Saab.

17 out of 250 or more employees found drinking on the job? 17? How many DWP workers where caught out of how many total employed? How many of the auto workers where caught out of how many total employed? 10% 20% 30% all of them? Do you know? Does Fox News know? If you're a TV news producer and need to boost your ratings, put a hidden camera outside of any large factory and you just might see the same thing. How about an undercover exposee about the percentage of union workers who don't break the law, do their jobs well, have families and are good citizens and are grateful for the bailout? No ratings there. People only want to see the bad behavior so they have someone to blame. If you own a business and it fails, who should you blame? Your employees?

I've run manufacturing companies, Rick, here and overseas, union and non-union, and now own/run my own business. No argument whatsoever about slackers, but those people didn't cause the problems that required bailouts, it was their bosses. Those bosses were giving themselves $150 MILLION dollar bonuses through 2008, even after the crisis was in progress, and that's far more than all the slacker welders put together could have cost the company. And it was management that negotiated those union contracts. Ford had the same contracts and didn't need a bailout, it was poor decisions made for decades at GM and Chrysler. Those decisions that weren't made by welders, but by top management and approved by their Boards. Same is true for the banks, the mortgage companies, etc, etc. It wasn't the employees in cubicles, but their bosses in the boardrooms who have full responsibility. That's what management's job is, being responsible for the bottom line.

So someone screwed up, like maybe your idiot arsehole neighbor's Christmas tree lights catching his house on fire. He screwed up and deserves it, so let it burn, right? But if you let it burn uncontrolled it will certainly catch your house on fire, then your neighbors, then the whole block. It's common sense, for the good of the community, that you get together to put it out, to protect the whole community. Then probably kick the shit out of the neighbor and write new rules to make sure it doesn't happen again. But don't let the whole community burn just because one idiot was stupid.

So in that same warm fuzzy spirit of community, MERRY CHRISTMAS to all you Teeners and former Saab owners.

Come on.. Ford? They were in trouble. They chose to not take the bail out. Come on. House fires? We have laws to help companies in trouble. They were put in place because when all citizens or companies were in financial trouble their creditors could and would come and put them out on the street. Why are we re-writting history? Is GM any stronger? Did they lean out? Are all the unaffordable contracts that were negociated during good times still in place? Come on, Employees have no role here? Do you see private industry needing bailouts. I think everyone working for GM and Chrysler had a shared responsability.

As I posted my opinion is Saab was a dumping ground for GM debt. What about their employees. Why don't we run in there in our santa suit and toss them a couple hundred billion of China's money.

One of the first lesson's I learned in business school is you can't borrow yourself out of debt. That goes for the smallest business' and the largest governments. And you certainly don't borrow money from someone that doesn't own the money they are giving out.

With that thinking our government should never let any business fail. Lets just guarantee that no business is allowed to fail. Possibly we could make all business government owned and guarantee jobs for all citizens. That seems fair. No one percent. We all get paid the same, we all have the same standard of living.

Cant argue with a certain % of any group being bad. The difference between a union and a non union plant is in the non union plant the 17 bad apples would be fired on the spot and escorted off the property. Try that in a union plant.

I saw that several times in the union plant I worked....generalizations will get your ass in a sling. Many who were walked out came back after "taking the cure" for a month or 2.
Those who refused to take it were just gone. Those that came back were random tested for a year or so.....flunk once and they were gone. The work place is a "kinder/gentler" place these days.

Back in the 60s booze was common in the work place (ship yard). Had way too many "nips" myself on the day before Christmas.....till the hammer came down...."no more of that shit". Then it would get you a free ticket out the gate and go on your "permanent record".

Things are quite a bit different these days. .....but how would you know that?

I'm with you up to there. If I obtain a mortgage, I'm looking for the cheapest money around. If it comes from a bank, it's not the bank's own money they are lending. It's from investors.

Now, if you are arguing against fractional reserve banking, especially in terms of the Federal Reserve/GSEs/FDIC - hoo boy, that is a whopper. I very much recommend reading "The Creature from Jekyll Island" to everyone. It is the history of banking (especially the Federal Reserve) and how money relates to significant events in history. Which is to say, history itself, b/c it's all about money. Very entertaining.

I never said that and don't believe it either. Lots of companies fail and deserve to, always did and always will, but there's no need for them to take a lot of innocent spectators along with them. Punish the wrongdoers, not everyone else.

If the river floods the neighbors all get together and build a dam so it doesn't happen again. If there's a drought the neighbors get together and dig a deeper well. Then those neighbors don't let any random idiot mess with the dam or shit in the well. I'll repeat that if you insist on letting the whole city burn down because one idiot played with fire then you're more foolish than he is. Fix the immediate problem, save the city, then punish the idiot. Get together for a volunteer fire department, make sure no one else can do what he did again, don't build houses so close to each other in the future, don't let anyone get too big to fail, and then everybody just move along and get back to work. That's the cheapest, most rational and effective solution. What you're suggesting is the equivalent of letting that first house burn, the rest of the city with it, and we all go live in the forest, every man for himself. No offense, it's a free country and cool if that's what you want to do, but it's a cold dark forest and I just plain don't see the need.

This was all decided a long time ago, is all history now, and also a dead horse. Merry Christmas all.

I'm closing this up.
If you have beef, you know where to find me.
Otherwise

Zach