It’s been quite a while since we received news about the Swedish automaker SAAB. Back in December last year, the company filed for bankruptcy even though for a while the owner of the automaker by the name of Swedish Automobile tried very hard to find for the problematic carmaker a buyer who would be interested in paying all of the outstanding debts and after that investing in the development of new vehicles.
Ever since then the administrators started selling the rest of the assets in order to make some money for paying back the creditors. One of the remaining assets is the SAAB brand itself which a bunch of companies from all over the world have been interested in. The bad news is that a former owner (General Motors) of SAAB is not quite keen on letting SAAB and its technology in the hands of rivals. Up until now GM has managed to block all of the deals but it seems that thing are about to change in the near future.
Although nothing official has been announced up until now, it seems that there is a consortium consisting of several investment firms from Japan and China that have reached an agreement to purchase SAAB and relaunch this brand as an EV manufacturer. These details were confirmed by Mattias Bergman who is the spokesperson for the National Electric Vehicle Sweden consortium.
If things go as planned, in 2014 we are going to see a new vehicle wearing the SAAB moniker which will be in fact an electric car based on the company’s 9-3 sedan. If this will turn out to be a success for the company, SAAB will expand its lineup by launching a second-gen 9-3 model which will be based on a platform that the Swedish carmaker has developed before it financially collapsed. We are talking about the platform that SAAB previewed last year when they presented the cool PhoeniX concept that had a hybrid powertrain while the body of the vehicle was drawn by famous designer Jason Castriota.
It seems that SAAB will go global in terms of marketing and sales but at first the emphasis will be on the Chinese market. We’ll keep you posted once this deal goes official. Let’s hope that it will do as we’re sure that none of you want to see SAAB dead for good.
Source: Green Car Reports
