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I know there is about zero chance of this happening (for many reasons, primarily including that GM wants SAAB to disappear), but here's my wishful thinking...
The existing management at SAAB seems to be excellent. The people of Trollhattan are passionate about SAAB and have a lot to lose if it fails completely. Maybe GM could be convinced to sell the branding and some subset of basic equipment, facilities, and technology to the existing management team at a fire sale price. An internal buyout. Focus on grabbing core competencies + not models. No NG9-5 or 9-4x. Probably no existing 9-3. Ie stop production. Use the safety test facilities (a key core competency) to generate a little revenue testing other manufacturer's cars (eg Chinese need this!). Keep a core team of design + engineering support + round up venture capital support (many successes so far). Use that to develop a new car based on historic SAAB values + new technology for 2014. Make it outstanding + relaunch the company on that (personally my wish would be for a $70k "Recharged" SPG/Aero hatch: a Porsche Panamera killer). Gotta be unique. Gotta be killer. Take preorders as investment. Ie instead of Bender "donating" $5k to the company, put $5k down on the future purchase. This is the model used by many eco/supercar companies + it seems to work.
It would still brutally hurt employment there but have to drop costs. Essentially start fresh, ditch the GM baggage. Now is the time for technological change for all brands. A "new" company could be far more agile. There are many popping up - we'll see how many survive... but I suspect the existing SAAB management team is good enough to pull it off... if they ever got the chance... but I don't think they need the new 9-5 or 9-4x to do it... in fact, I think due to the extensive GM content, those products could just confuse the message... it's actually kind of too bad they sold the old tooling to the Chinese (and how much else??)... could have kept on making body panels etc for the old cars as a revenue generator...
(like I said, wishful thinking)
James...
posted by 216.75.18...
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