Slashdot Mirror
GM Is Selling Saab To Spyker Cars
johncadengo writes "General Motors said today that it has struck a preliminary deal to sell Saab to Spyker Cars, a tiny Dutch maker of high-end sports cars, saving the Swedish automaker from what seemed like certain extinction after previous bids for it collapsed. A previous bid from Spyker was rejected by GM in late December because GM was uncomfortable with Spyker's Russian backers. The biggest investor in Spyker is the Russian bank Convers Group, which is controlled by Alexander Antonov. In March, Mr. Antonov was shot seven times and reportedly lost a finger in an attempt on his life in Moscow. No arrests have been made. His son Vladimir, 34, is a top executive at Convers and the chairman of Spyker." GM is taking a bath on the deal, financially speaking.
Nerds buy geeky cars. Saab is a geeky car. At one point they had sodium inside the valves for cooling. They had standard turbochargers whey you couldn't get turbocharges. They had heated seats and a rear windshield wiper, again not normal for the time. And I have a Saab.....
Spyker has 130-odd employees and builds around 40 cars a year.
Saab has 34,000 employees and builds around 100,000 cars a year.
Neither of them make money.
- Who is kidding who with this particularly peculiar "takeover"?
Some of those 130 Spyker employees are high-level management. So let's reword it:
Saab is being bought by a Russian bank, who is installing Spyker executives as its management.