SAAB

The SAAB saga (no, that's not a new model) is still not over, despite news that a sale has been arranged.

SAAB, now free of its GM constraints and in ownership of specialist sports car maker Spyker is to reintroduce the Griffin, this time as a variant of the new 9-3 model

It was a car that generated lust or nausea: born as the road-going equivalent of a military vehicle, Hummer wanted to be the Jeep of the 21st Century. It was a car that, had the idea arisen today, would never have been born. And with its Tonka-toy styling, its ridiculous demand for real-estate in the middle of a busy road and a fuel consumption that only oil-rich show-offs could realistically afford, there is little doubt that it was doomed.

It's been a game of brinkmanship with one of the world's best brands almost disappearing. But at last an deal has been done that allows the Swedish government to guarantee a loan that will support the purchase of SAAB from GM by Spyker of the Netherlands.

Spyker and GM have said little about the terms of the deal which, at last, rescued SAAB from imminent closure. But pieces of information are coming together.

As GM continued its shutdown of SAAB, Genii Capital said that that was the final straw and pulled out of discussions. That was yesterday morning in Europe. By yesterday morning in the USA, GM had announced it had, at last done a deal to sell what's left of SAAB. It would, the company said, go to Spyker after all, and the shutdown would be suspended immediately.

After almost a decade of losses as GM moved SAAB from its quirky but profitable models to standardised boxes built from the GM parts bin, the final attempt to save the company has failed. As Spyker dropped out of negotiations, GM says it is starting a wind-down of operations.

Saying that it could not reach agreement with its consortium partners over a strategy to move SAAB from mass market to premium brand, Koenigsegg has told both GM and the consortium that it's not going ahead with the deal announced in June.

When the GM stuff hit the fan, the first brand to go under was SAAB, calling in administrators whilst other units cried for government money to keep them going.

General Motors is breaking up. When this newspaper suggested that US car makers had too many competing brands and not enough direction, plus too many attempts to fill niches which are best filled by specialist manufacturers, that view was not popular. Now that approach is at the core of GM's rescue plan as Hummer and Opel are sold off.