Chinese automotive group Youngman is on the verge of make a bid for Saab, according to news reports in Sweden.
Dagens Industri, a Swedish business news organisation, says Youngman is preparing to submit an offer of about £430 million for the bankrupt car firm.
Youngman’s top brass – including chairman Pang Qingnian – are due to travel to Sweden next week to present the bid, which involves a further £400m being invested to develop new models on the Phoenix platform.
General Motors, which had technical licensing agreements with Saab, has threatened to cancel those agreements if the car company was taken over by Chinese interests.
Such a move would impact on Saab’s current model range, but Youngman believes it can make Saab work without GM’s involvement.
If the bid is successful, Youngman intends to commence production of the 9-3 model in about April or May.
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Re: Youngman to make new Saab bid
Here we go again! What's going on with these Saabites? I make a perfectly reasonable reply and offer to quote my source and I'm told I'm being negative.
Why are these Saab supporters so frightened by facts?
I've still to dig out that quote, but just remembered there was another quote from a respected pro-Saab journalist who attended one of the UK meets last weekend (according to what I read anyway) who I believe stated the same - that the 9-3 was just a Vectra. I'll dig the exact quote out for you (people never believe me you know) but it went something like, "just because you put the starter key in the central console, doesn't turn a Vectra in to a Saab." From memory I think you'll find it in the SU thread about YM wanting to restart production with just the old 9-3.Re: Youngman to make new Saab bid
Not that it would happen but I wonder if BMW could turn SAAB into a VW competitor using their new FWD architecture and also produce BMW and MINI branded vehicles in Trollhättan for Scandinavian markets.
Maybe they looked at it for a few minutes but realised they would have to deal with the idiots at GM and quickly came to the conclusion that they would spend a Billion euros alone in a long drawn out negotiation period which by the time it ended, all the ex-workers would have found alternative employment and the receivers would have sold everything off leaving nothing left.
Re: Youngman to make new Saab bid