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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.
This isn't nerdy at all... Have Slashdotters turned into bankers?
I used to want a 900 back in the 80s, then GM bought them. I hope Spyker can undo the damage GM has done, and turn the cars into something I would like again.
Sheldon
Correct me if I am wrong: In all of my financial learning, it is not "taking a bath" When you sell a product more for more then simply retiring the brand. In fact, you gain a profit if you now do not have to handle the termination of all the employees....
This is something, instead of nothing. I call it a win.
True, they would of been able to sell it for far more if they had not completely devalued the brand, but they have no right to complain on that fault.....
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
Did kdawson worry that we might think GM executives would have to take a bath literally?
That's not even an analogy, guy.
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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"?
You're not my friend, guy.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
In Soviet Russia, you WILL buy our car! It doesn't cost an arm and a leg ... yet.
Well you're mine now, baz.
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It is tangentially connected to someone getting shot?
I was going for a "You're not my friend, guy". "You're not my buddy, friend". "You're not my guy, buddy." South Park thread, but oh well.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
... saab arises as new competitor to GM...GM loses. Again.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
From a better source:
"But three crucial issues remained (and still remain): Spyker must deliver the cash, the Swedish government must guarantee a loan, and Spyker Chairman Vladimir Antonov must leave the company."
Many more details:
"The Antonovs were not allowed to start a branch of their Baltic bank Snoras in Britain.The British financial supervisory authority rejected the application, due to the Antonov's nasty reputation for being reluctant to cooperate with the authorities and their general uncommunicativeness.
It is still unclear why the oligark Vladimir Antonov was gunned down and seriously wounded in Moscow in March. But the Antonovs have operations in the harbour in Kaliningrad (former Königsberg), which is notorious for being controlled by the Russian mafia. Kaliningrad is one of the main harbours for shipping guns and drugs to western Europe. In Russia, it is assumed that the attempted assassination is linked to a struggle for power over the operations in Kaliningrad.
No Russian journalists dare to comment on the Antonovs on camera, but off the record they claim that the family has links to shady arms deals.
The Antonovs own a bank in Panama, known as a tax haven. It is not unusual for wealthy Russians to use banks in tax havens for money laundry operations, according to TV4."
I was going for a BadAnalogyGuy, but he seems to be sleeping. Didn't catch the Southpark reference, though. My humblest apologies.
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About the only thing interesting about Saab was the turbo engines it used for a long time. Oh, and hatchback/wagon body styles.
Otherwise, it's become an overpriced front-drive Euro junk for many years now. It certainly don't got the German handling touch. More closer to halfway between a Beemer and Oldsmobile cows.
Go ahead. Tell me what so special about it. Something more than the superficial key hole in the middle aisle and the like.
Did I mention it's expensive to service this make?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
It wasn't a bailout, it was a loan, which they are already paying back. Go back to your fox/cnn/nbc news network and leave the intelligent people alone.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
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.
At one point they also had 2-cycle engines (you had to add oil to the gas tank every time you filled it up) and, if you did it right, you could get the engine running backwards, giving you a car with one speed forward and four in reverse. If that ain't geeky, I don't know what is. You could probably win a lot of bar bets with it.
Sodium-cooled valves isn't all that geeky, though. The 292 CID V-8 in my 1964 Ford F-150 pickup had them, as do a lot of other heavy-duty vehicles.
This ain't rocket surgery.
So how does this work in car analogies? Do I have to find a computer analogy instead? ... does not compute.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I have a SAAB 900NG (post-GM). It's basically a Vauxhall Vectra with a SAAB look-a-like bodyshell and a large number of strange design faults compared with the Vectra. It's really expensive to get parts for it here in Australia despite sharing many of them with some Holden models. Apart from having a very large boot it doesn't really have a lot going for it. Its handling and performance aren't really up to much - I've experience far better in much cheaper cars. Frankly in hindsight I wish I hadn't bought it. While apparently the design improved with the 9-3 and beyond, sales have tanked. Why bother when the real SAAB died at the end of the 80s with the original 900 and almost any other car in its class is cheaper to run.
Superior European thinking will make this work! You heretical bastard! What you say? Did you call me Commie?!
With this "takeover", will Saab become an official car of Russian mob? and if so, will it become available in Moscow at Mob2 on FB?
To be fair, most of the players in the automotive industry haven't made any money in quite a long time.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
OK, let's see how many readers get that pun...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
you realize that their stellar financial performance in last few months was a direct result of Cash for Clunkers program which was a blatant handout of taxpayer's money to car manufacturers? We shall see what happens when there is no more stimulus. I suspect that the sales will grind to halt and they will be SOL again
Pretty much the same thing was with Goldman Sachs - they were about to collapse, government came to the rescue with tarp plus lent money practically for free (0,5%), so folks at GS could buy treasury bonds (maybe around 4% - difference is pure risk-free profit at the taxpayer's expense) and gambled in stock market. Thanks to their 'brilliant' strategy they could repay tarp to be free of constraits again... and pay record high bonuses to their managers.
Even 7 year old would make a profit with heavy subsidies from the buddies in government.
1. Keep MSRPs where they are on the Turbo X, but fix Trionic 8 engine management and boost power output to compete with the 335i and 135i power output.
Costs Money
2. Go RWD and XWD in the new 9-3
Costs Money
3. Lower MSRP on the base "touring" and "comfort" sedans to what people actually pay for them (well under $30K) and institute "no haggle" pricing across the boar
Even more money...and the advertising, and paring the dealer network, all costs money. Saab has its fans for sure, but, its always been an overrated car, has never -really- been that profitable in the history of the company, and the fact is Saab was on the way to the scrap heap prior to being bought by GM to begin with.
If Saab were -really- that profitable, there would have been more than one buyer. But most people know what's up with Saab, and its a goner.
So now a crappy ugly car gets built buy a car company that make ugly fast cars....
That depends on the car, and the worker. Can you imagine UAW workers making a C8 Aileron?
Your Olds would loose any day to a Bugatti going in reverse. It is laughable what passes for a muscle car in the US. This discussion is not about muscle cars, it's about cool every day cars.
"You can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them." [Condoleezza Rice]
GM isn't losing shit really, I am, since I paid to bail their asses out and their making retarded decisions that even Timmy knows better than to make.
They didn't even bother to SELL their 3rd most profitable brand, they just terminated it.
These people need to be exterminated. They draw massive freaking salaries and have 0 accountability. Its time to pull out the tar, feathers and nooses. This time we hang the right people though.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Kind of like what happens when you mix Swedish and Russian vodka :/
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
What makes a '70s car nerdy? I could make a venturi tube (think carburetor) when I was in 3rd grade. Six injectors, a continuous-feedback fuel control system, servo controlled throttle body for drive by wire?
Nah, my MY2000's a lot more fun to screw with. I'm pretty sure I could tear down just about any simple-as-pie 70's muscle car like a tinkertoy in a day and a half. In high school.
Joy-in-trollhatten
Joy-in-the-troll-hat
Happy trolling everyone :)
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.
My 73 Olds Delta 88 would crush your little Saab!
Probably true. Saab pioneered crumple zones and collapsable steering columns.
You'd be dead, and my car would be ruined. I know which side of that equation I'd prefer to be on.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
If that were true, it would correlate with European automotive industry in general being "parasites"; which is far from true, they managed to go through the hard times in a much more gracefull way than US automakers. Maybe there's a problem with the latter and their handling of subsidiaries...
One that hath name thou can not otter
FWIW, cash for clunkers was not just a subsidy to car makers (though it mostly was).
It was also a way to reduce gas usage in the US, and a way to soak up already built cars (see the nissan test track covered with cars that didn't sell). The car makers can cut manufacturing, but they still had inventory to move.
Cash for clunkers moved sales that were going to come in a few years to now, when they were needed.
Note, the last sentance assumes you buy into the concept of stimulus at all, which intelligent people are not required to do. The point is, that it was more than a strait subsidy, it was money given out to encourage "good" behavior (buying cars now, using less gas), and not a strait payment to the car makers.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Well, I can imagine them fighting for 3 workers per a car at least.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Thats really the fault of GM. They were profitable when GM bought them. GM has introduced an insane amount of restrictions and bad design choices that they forced the european brands to use. SAAB employees has been complaining about this for many years.
Posted by a Debian GNU/Linux user
It wasn't a bailout, it was a loan, which they are already paying back. Go back to your fox/cnn/nbc news network and leave the intelligent people alone.
For an intelligent person, your claims are factually incorrect. It was partially a loan, mostly a cash for equity deal in which the government essentially bought General Motors for ~$40B.
The government won't be paid back until new shares are sold to private investors.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
There's more to the auto industry than Detroit.
Toyota and VW were making huge profits before the financial collapse -- they will probably be joined by Ford and possibly GM when the global economy recovers.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Let's see:
* GM is run by beancounters who landed GM where they were last winter
* Spyker can't produce enough cars and needs production facilties; which Saab factories provide in spades
* Saab needs passionate management, not an owner who will just take the best engineering Saab produces for other products, leaving Saab with crap to work with.
Given how badly GM has mismanaged Saab, it is amazing just how good the 9-3 and 9-5's track records are. They are extremely reliable (2003 9-3 teething issues aside; pretty much expected with any new car model), they are the best in their class for crash testing, are very comfortable, can achieve well over 30mpg(combined.. My best full tank to date is 36mpg) when driven conservatively. Handling is really good (the passive rear wheel steering helps!), it has the only stability control system and ABS I don't hate, and braking is incredible.
Saab can turn around. Look at what BMW and Audi have done; both have been at the brink of failure in the not so distant past.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If European brands are so terrible, why did GM go through hell and high-water to hang on to Opel?
The truth is that a good chunk of GM's engineering is done in Europe; their modern american cars use the same platforms and engines.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Ford/GM were bleeding cash like stuck pigs LONG before the GFC. It's because (with a few exceptions that are not mass market) they make bad cars in an inefficient manner.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Spyker builds 40 crappy cars a year but manages to stay alive due to verv good marketing.
Saab builds 100,000 good cars a year but nearly died because GM destroyed the brand.
Combining them can go two very different ways.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
True. I'm bullish on Ford because they've finally adopted a business strategy of selling higher-margin, higher-quality products worthy of their first world cost structure. It might take a decade for people to catch on, but IMO there's a good chance Ford will become the American VW, if not the American Honda.
GM ... I'm not sure if they've divorced themselves from the idea of "sell the most cars, make the most profits", despite the fact that "sell at a loss, make it up on volume" put them in bankruptcy court.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
No, I think Mercedes did, but of course the Swedish did pioneer the moose crash-test for obvious reasons.
I hope that the new owners find some of what Saab had before the GM takeover. They were interesting, quirky cars; since GM bought them they've become more or less generic eurocars with little to distinguish them from so many other brands out there.
I'm old enough to care little about cars these days - they're a tool for getting you about - but I do have a soft spot for Saab as my first couple of cars where Saabs.
Two thoughts on that: When Saab isn't required to buy substandard GM gear at inflated prices it may turn out to be profitable yet.
And obviously SAAB doesn't need to be profitable, if they manage to restore a bit of the brands credibility, that in itself will increase the share value enough to sell it back to GM with a profit.
They were on the brink of dumping Opel too, but then realized that Insignia is selling like hotcakes. That and the new Astra are possibly two most competent products Opel has ever had, with innovative design that can be adapted to American models too. Probably smart decision to old onto that.
The moose test is not a crash test. It tests the car's ability to make an evasive maneuver (for instance, with a moose in the middle of the road) and then get back on track again. See the wiki.
Quantum hacker.
If Benny from ABBA had been called Sven, then ABBA would have been called SAAB. Jerry
The fact that for most of the components, you actually *can* tear them apart and repair them, you can pull a carb apart and work on it, I'd like to see you try that on a fuel injector. Most modern cars contain single use items that are press fit and sealed at the factory, never to be serviced because you simply *cannot*.
But thats just the beginning, the geekiest thing about a 70's car is it is usually very easy to shoehorn modern technology into them and even program that shit yourself! I have a 1970s Australian muscle car and I have very big dreams of fitting all the typical modern equipment into it, with software I can tune myself from a usb port I've installed somewhere myself. I've considered hiding a touchscreen somewhere like in the glove box, running some flavour of linux on cannibalised netbook hardware, or even an ARM dev board. I've even been considering writing my own engine management software and putting it on a suitably fast micro to run my injectors/ignition. I also want a discrete under-bonnet blower with an electric clutch so I literally have an on/off switch for my boost.
I have nothing but the absolute geekiest dreams about my 70's muscle car. Playing with some fragile, locked down engineering departments toy is not geeky, but creating your own toy certainly is. The 70's muscle car is the *parfect* clean slate to do this.
It will give Saab employees a little bit more time to search for a new job.
That's all.
There is two test that is both refered as "the moose test"
The first one is a "evasive maneuver test" the other one is a crash test with a dummy moose. They tend to land in the windshield because of their long legs.
In Sweden during the 80's we used to say that those who owned a Volvo also used a PC (MS-DOS) and those who owned a SAAB also used a Mac.
For a nice date: Call strftime(3C)!
...and the venture money comes from Russia. Only the first chess move, so far.
How about a (-2) 'hate speech' mod.
Then I can read slashdot at a -1 threshold without having to read this crap.
(some Offtopic -1 post are still interesting)
I agree wholeheartedly. And who the hell modded this Flamebait? Offtopic, perhaps, but still a very valid point, considering the recent crap that trolls have been posting on Slashdot.
The FF version of the Jensen Interceptor best fits the idea of "the first 4WD road car". It also had primitive forms of ABS and traction control.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Crumple zones work for everyone regardless of which vehicle you're in. Meanwhile, the lighter vehicle still experiences a greater change in momentum. If he dies and you don't, it's not because your car has the crumple zones, but because of the other safety features. Now, if you both hit a brick wall, you're more likely to live... unless your car crumples up against his first.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Speed Racer? Is that you?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
It would get misused like all the others.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
the Swedish did pioneer the moose crash-test for obvious reasons.
I don't know why you would let a moose drive in the first place. Maybe I'm biased because my sister was bitten by a moose.
Not even the original submitter bothered...
Part of the reason this deal went through (when the previous one did not) is because one of the Spyker execs (Muller) effectively bought out his Russian partners - There is no longer any controlling Russian interest in Spyker.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti...
I add: and if they are so terrible how could FIAT buy Chrysler with the backing of the Obama administration?
Until about four months ago, I worked for a company that was a GM OEM supplier. I didn't work in the Automotive Group, but I saw the way they operated, and how GM operated.
There's a lot that needed to be flushed out of that company with a high pressure hose, but that wasn't, because they weren't forced into bankruptcy.
Because they were 'saved' from bankruptcy they remain the same festering mess. And it seems they probably will, indefinitely.
Can someone knowledgeable about AWD systems break down the differences between XWD, previous Haldex AWD and other AWD (say, Subaru's) systems? Most of us can look up the Wikipedia article for technical details, so actual performance in real life driving would be neat.
No need to go overboard into off road 4WD or competitive driving, thanks.
Saab has 34,000 employees and builds around 100,000 cars a year.
You are mistaken about the number of Saab employees by a whole order of magnitude.
BRAVO Kimvette:
hit the nail on the head!
SAAB had an amazing history of pioneering technologies and unique Sweedish design esthetics (which really is unique, and is more than IKEA).
They got buried in GM (who actually did a decent job rebranding Cadillac in the market), but never knew how to position SAAB in the market.
Wish this was finalized a few years ago prior to the 9-5 redesign (though it looks nice).
Here's praying that as they go forward and aren't required to pull from the GM parts bins we should see some real changes.
Someone in SAAB: PLEASE look back to the 900 prior to 94 and bring back the whale tale long slant hatchback...put that on top of the amazing best-in-class X-drive and you've really got something....like the Mini, not for everyone, but some unique bodies don't need to change for change's sake.
NO, SAAB was NOT profitable when GM bought them. They were losing HUNDREDS of millions a year.
WTF is wrong with people? Don't you do ANY research?
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/11/business/saab-venture-reports-loss.html
Where in my post did I say SAAB? If you look at the parent to my post you'll see that we were discussing brands GM have bought in Europe in general, not SAAB in particular.
Posted by a Debian GNU/Linux user