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The wages for november has now been paid and are on their way to the employees! This is fantastic work by the authorities!

The first thing that happened today was that all employees were let go, this is a natural step in order for the governmental salary-fund to be able to work. However none of the employees have been paid yet, and the deadline for the banks to be able to issue the money to the employees before x-mas is at 17:00 today.

Rachel Pang and Johan Nylén arrived in Trollhättan today and are as I write this meeting with the administrators and Victor Muller. They have a very though job ahead of them and several different solutions will be discussed. The largest obstacle in their efforts to Save Saab is clearly GM, BUT, since all the employees were let go, there is also a time-constraint that is extremely important. Several key people are needed if the production is every to be able to restart. These people are now actively looking for new jobs, who can blame them right? And if Saab is to survive and be able to produce cars in the future, these people are absolutely essential. One of them is my own father and the dedication he and his colleagues are showing towards Saab is just unbelievable, for now, most of them are just riding out the storm and keep observing how things develop. All they want in the end is to build cars in Trollhättan again!

There were rumors that Turkish interests wanted to buy pieces of Saab’s technology. This has now been denied by Turkish Ministers. I personally have lived and worked in Turkey for about a year back in 2008 and I feel that the Turkish thoughts about buying technology and such is a nice one, but this type of technology is extremely advanced and I’m not sure if those companies interested would just be wasting their time buying technology and not the means to implement it, which is the factory itself.

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TTELA:

Youngman and the CEO Rachel Pang has not given up hope on Saab. This is confirmed by Johan Nylén, lawyer at the firm Baker McKenzie in Stockholm who are representing Youngman.

- They will arrive in Sweden wednesday to meet with the administrators. The management for the company are very disappointed with GM’s decision this weekend, but they are very interested in finding a solution. De will try to act fast. They are interested in Saab’s development, Saab Powertrain and the Phoenix technology. In reality they are interested in trying to save as much as possible of the current operations in Trollhättan.

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Interesting reading from Researchers Matthias Holweg University of Cambridge/Judge Business School and Nick Olivier University of Edinburgh Business School.
A 40 page report read it here:
http://www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/43768/Who-killed-Saab-Automobile-Final-Report-December-19-2011.pdf

Picture by Embert Saeter
Koenigsegg owner Bård Eker talks to www.dn.no in Norway and says:

- I am following what´s going on. We need to hope for the best. There are interesting possibilities for Saab.

Just what this mean we do not know, but they did the ground work some years ago they might just have to make minor adjustment in there Numbers/Excel files and come up with a revitalized business plan. Keep Saab in Sweden with the makers of the worlds fastest 0-300-0 km/h production car would be, lets put it right, more than interesting.

Well yesterday it happened, guess few was really surprised. It is of course a sad day in many ways but it can also be a springboard for something else or different. Now when Victor Muller is “out-of-the-picture”, there might be sufficient space for someone else to step in with fresh new ideas or old remodeled ones. I had a long conversation with lawyer Rolf Åbjörnsson last night. He had been approached by several interested parties guess the the is the same with the by the district court appointed lawyers. Guess it is like Wanna White says “The price is right”, now the price for Saab is right. Now it is the true market price. What parties really are willing to pay for the company plus debts. Swedish media talks today of a Youngman delegation arriving soon to Trollhättan (well those guys have already put substantial amounts in the Saab business), also the Turkish embassy in Stockholm has met with the Department of Industry and Commerce. Turkey is already a big country for car manufacturing but the still do not have a brand of their own.
My guess is that we will see more suitors courting the Saab-bride in the coming days, but there is not much time to be wasted now. Skilled labour is not bolted to the factory floor as the machines, they are free to run their lives. Lets hope for a new REAL buyer soon.
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Keep the good spirit up and the Saab-Andan. The whole world is watching and keeping their fingers crossed. Saab is right now a bargain wish that we at SU had the fundings to buy the whole company. What about the employee and unions do they have the financial muscles to pull this off. Where are the Swedish Risk Capitalists now? Lets hope they are following this, but I guess the will not sail a ship if the revenue is less then 20% annually. Is that possible to do with Saab?

TTELA has been in contact with GM’s press-manager in Detroit, Mr James R Cain, who after the bankruptcy was a fact, explained that this happened because of an issue that has played out over a long time but states nothing about what happened this weekend.

“This is the sad culmination of a tough struggle that has played out over many months” This is the reaction from GM.

When TTELA spoke to the lawyer who was due to replace Guy Lofalk, Mr Lars Söderqvist, he thought that GM’s decision this weekend was very strange. He was kept busy last week getting up to date on the ownership solutions between Youngman and Saab Automobile. He claims that the decision taken by GM could hurt GM’s reputation.

TTELA: How do you mean?

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P4 West reports that minister of Enterprise visited Trollhättan today, while standing outside the main gate of Saab she could not offer any solution nor any means of help.

- The government has closely followed the process and it is important that we present improvements said Anni Lööf to P4 West.

Why don’t you have any actions to take now?
- It is important that we present improvements and reinforcements in areas where the local representatives feels it important.

But why have you not chosen to present a package? It is an expected bankruptcy.
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A few months ago a company called MFX, located in Gothenburg got in touch with Saab and offered to do a video on the 9-4x. Saab as you know were in a difficult situation and couldn’t afford that but the idea was that MFX do the video for free just to help out! MFX has been a long time supplier to Saab for still-footage. Most of the photos you’ve seen in catalogues etc are done by MFX. Saab of course were very grateful for the offer and took them up on this.

Saab offered to loan them a 9-4x for a full day and this is what MFX managed to produce, I’d say that it is most impressive. The video was shot in the surroundings of Gothenburg, inside the city and also on the small island of Öckerö. Timing was everything regarding the video since they only had the car for one day.

R.I.P SAAB from MFX CGI Solutions on Vimeo.

Saab had the intention to use the video widely to promote the 9-4x once the dust had settled. The video was released to dealers in the US only to be used for promotion of the 9-4x. As a tribute to the brand, MFX has now released the video on its Vimeo channel.

Another interesting thing about this video is the song, it is written and performed by a Dutch singer, Tara Teresa. The song is called Make Yourself Heard. This song is written and recorded especially for this 9-4x video and will shortly be available on an album which Tara is working on. You will be able to download the song from both iTunes and Spotify.

MFX Website: http://www.mfx.se/
Tara Teresa’s website: http://www.TaraTeresa.com/

Tv4 West made a small interview with me about a week ago regarding the Saab Museum and today they’ve aired a piece of it where they are also asking the local politicians about saving the museum. What I basically said in the interview was that I feel is a big shame that such a piece of national treasure has not been safe-guarded by the politicians. They of course want to do what ever they can but they are unable to afford the aprox 5 million SEK per year which would be the cost of maintaining and running the museum. And placing such cost against the costs of running schools and hospitals of course the later is more important than a museum.

However, this does not stop them from looking at other options, perhaps a favorable non-profit lease of the facilities to a private entity. Right now though the Museum is in safe hands, the issue above was most urgent considering that the cars had been claimed by the enforcement agency, the museum and its collection is part of the bankruptcy dealings and will most likely be part of a potential sale to a new owner. So for now, we’re keeping calm and carrying on! =)

Here is a very nice video shot from the Muesum by Budd Shawn (2010 9-3xwd) from the US, it was shot last thursday.

SAAB Car Museum from Shawn Budd on Vimeo.