Last Night, Tim Colbeck gave the keynote speech for the Sponsors’ Dinner at the Saab Owners Convention. The New York Times was there to cover it, and mention that he had one particular clip he found particularly relevant to Saab’s current situation.
Swade played that clip here before, and it’s certainly an apt time to bring it out again.
Said Colbeck to the gathered attendees:
“My relationship with the press is summed up in this movie scene,” he said. He showed the clip from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” in which a cart of dead bodies rolls through plague-ridden medieval England. “But I’m not dead,” one of the bodies cries feebly as it is loaded aboard.
It got a laugh.
“All this press has really eroded confidence in the brand,” Mr. Colbeck said. “But we are going to wear them out in this battle.”
He showed a PowerPoint illustrating Saab’s financial ups and downs, with a flow chart and timeline with green, blue and yellow boxes — the latter color corresponding to trying moments in the company’s recent history. “The yellow boxes are the ones the press covers,” he said.
We certainly hope that soon we can slam the door shut on the death warrants, and hold all the journalists who looked for an easy headline grabber to task for what they’ve written. Sometimes they write self-fulfilling prophecies, and for once I wish they’d just stay quiet and wait for the real story of Saab’s financial picture to emerge.
I believe some film clips from the current Harry Potter movie might be in order in the future, too. After all, only GM “can live forever”. Don’t count Saab out.
Just a thought.
I was thinking about the clip the other day again because all of the press writing Saab off…just as they did back before the last minute effort VM put in to save Saab during the sale. (Too bad I got into Parsippany too late to see that at the dinner Thursday night.)
Jeff, got to find you and say “Hi!” before the SOC is over.
Oh, yeah. And the NY Times blogger misspelled Sonett. (He called it odd. I guess it would seem odd if you don’t even know how to spell it.)
The journalist uses the word ‘odd’ in this context meaning ‘occasional’ or ‘sprinkling’, not ‘odd’ as in ‘unusual’.
If the “I am not dead yet” video is Saab, Mr. Muller must be the Black Knight. It’s just a flesh wound! 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4
LOL
This journalist wasn’t in the same room as me cause we sure gave Tom Colbeck a good round of applaus. Nevertheless, it’s nice that the NY Times covered this. Makes for some dearly needed positive news on SAAB. Griffen up!
Well it might very well be you were in two separate rooms as he was with a Tim Colbeck. 🙂
Indeed! It must be the scotch from the Turbo list hospitality sweet… and lack of sleep. 🙂
I too remember when Swade showed this. 🙂
After watching the vid again, I think the guy with the club looks a bit like AB?
-Off-Topic-
You shouldn’t go after AB.
He has his own problems at the moment, and is actually having to make statements to the press that are very reminiscent of some of VM’s statements
-On-topic-
I didn’t have a go at AB. I was just stating my personal opinion (speculation) and being very much on topic 😉
Off topic: I thought this was the biggest concern of Mr. Borg at the moment, no?
Yes..i was me going off-topic
I’ve always believed that Saab would outlive it’s former owner GM. In fact I jokingly stated on SU in early 2010 that one of these would be used at Cadillac’s funeral!