Tiny Dutch automaker Spyker Cars NV, the new owner of Saab Automobile, said on Tuesday that it expects the Swedish brand to turn a profit by 2012.
It appeared last month that Saab was all but dead: a last-minute bid by Spyker was rejected, and the Swedish company’s previous owner, General Motors, was expected to wind the brand down. But last week GM and Spyker announced that the sale of Saab was successfully completed – contingent upon several hundred million dollars in loans from the European Investment Bank.
“I’m very pleased that we could come to such a good conclusion, one that preserves jobs in Sweden and elsewhere,” GM Europe president Nick Reilly said last week.
The Swedish government pushed hard for the survival of the Saab brand, which became a wholly-owned subsidiary of GM in 2000. An estimated 3,500 Swedish jobs were at stake.
Spyker’s profit forecast assumes that the roll-out of the new 9-5 large midsize sedan later this year will be successful. The company projects that between 100,000 and 125,000 cars will be produced each year at two Saab plants; in addition to the redesigned 9-5, a crossover and a new version of the compact 9-3 sedan will be introduced in the near future.
By Benjamin Foster
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