Saab Love

I've mentioned it before, I'm a Saab guy. My last 2 cars were Saabs, and I'm still holding on to the pipe dream of getting a Europe-only Saab 90 and bringing it back home when we return. Saab has seen better days of late-- its neglectful corporate parent for the last decade, General Motors, had been trying to sell it for the last year, and one deal after another seemed to fall through. The vultures were circling, and GM had appointed a liquidation team to start the wind-down of this unique Swedish marque. The Swedish supercar maker Koenigsegg was supposed to have purchased Saab in December, but that deal fell through-- to hear the Koenigsegg folks tell the story-- literally as they were on their way to file the (signed!) contracts with the government of Sweden. Long story short, Dutch supercar manufacturer Spyker stepped into the breach and pulled off the improbable sale. I'll save my ire for GM some other time, other than to say that they did their level best to kill off Saab [starving them of development cash, negligible advertising budget for years, moving Saab production to Germany so Cadillacs(?!) could be made in Sweden, accounting tricks that would make Meyer Lansky blush, etc.] and it's a small wonder Saab was even around for Spyker to buy them. Barring any late objections or regulatory hurdles the sale should be finalized in mid-February. While I still have my doubts as to the long-term feasibility of a tiny manufacturer buying a much larger one, at least Saab gets a new lease on life, and a sympathetic ownership group who happen to be genuine Saab fans.