Month: October 2012

Swedish government happy to see Saab sold for $1million to a buyer that wouldn’t have been able to buy

The Swedish government has long been on my $h1tlist when it comes to Saab dealings. They like to position themselves as friends of the Swedish automotive industry with measures such as the automotive aid they offered back around 2008/9, which no-one took up because the repayment requirements were absolutely ridiculous.

The truth, however, when it comes to Saab, is that they couldn’t wait to see the back of it. They dragged their feet on the Koenigsegg deal, leading the consortium to pull out of the deal. They ignored findings from their own Debt Office about Saab’s proposed property deal.

Today, Swedish Radio have a story from a report into Saab’s bankruptcy where Guy Lofalk tried to do a backdoor deal to sell Saab for just $1 million to Volvo’s parent company, Geely. And the kicker is that the Swedish government, guarantors for Saab’s financial commitments to the EIB at the time, were apparently happy to go along with it.

FYI, it’s estimated that NEVS eventually paid around $274million for Saab, so Geely would have been getting quite the discount.

According to the report, Geely Chairman Li Shufu actually met with Swedish Finance Minister, Hans Lindblad to discuss the transaction, but Saab weren’t invited. The Ministry doesn’t deny a meeting took place but have declined to divulge the subject. In case you forgot, this was the future of a major Swedish-based, publicly traded industrial business they were discussing, without anyone from the business itself actually, you know, being there.

You might also remember that the Chinese government had a major role to play in any transaction involving a Chinese buyer. Hawtai previously had their hopes to buy into Saab dashed when the Chinese government made it very clear that Youngman was their preferred buyer. They had been given the right to act first and such a right is not just handed around. The fact that neither Lofalk or the Swedish Finance Ministry knew this just shows how off base they really were.

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest all their armpits.

Catching up with Victor Muller

I haven’t seen my old boss – Saab’s former Chairman and CEO, Victor Muller – since around October 2011. We’ve shared a few quick emails and phone calls since then, but that’s about all.

Prompted by a phone call with another former Saab colleague earlier this week, I decided to give Victor a call and see what’s going on. In doing so I found a Victor Muller who was as driven as ever, as busy as ever, but much more at peace with himself and the world.

There was a lot to recover from, too; much more than the very public battle to try and save Saab Automobile.

Victor lost his father and his sister during the fight to save Saab in 2011. These were the intensely personal parts of his “year from hell”, the parts that few people knew about until after the drama had unfolded. There were health issues, too, such as an emergency operation on his gall bladder in 2010, a procedure that he was still recovering from when I had my informal job interview with him, along with Jan-Ake Jonsson, at the LA Auto Show in November that year.

“For the first 8 months of my daughter’s life, I never saw her” he mentions. She was born in February 2011, just weeks before the factory shutdown that eventually led to Saab’s bankruptcy. He’s now spending his time mostly between the family home on Mallorca and Spyker’s HQ in Holland. That same daughter, now 18 months, is finally getting to know her Dad.

Saab’s dramas still cut deep with Victor but as sad as he is to have seen the company fall, the personal relief at getting his life back is palpable when you speak to him. When I raised the topic of Saab’s new ownership under NEVS, Victor is pleased for Trollhattan and for former employees who might have the opportunity to work at Stallbacka again. Like me, however, he seems lost when it comes to understanding how it is that NEVS are going to do what they plan to do.

“I haven’t come across anyone who is able to explain to me what NEVS does and how they’ll do it, but I’m sure someone, one day, will be able to explain it to me”, he says.

Victor is still dealing with fallout from his time with Saab. There is the ongoing taxation case brought by the Swedish government….

I will fight that to the highest court

….. and the case against General Motors:

We will lodge our defence against their motion to dismiss on November 9 and it will carry on from there.

Most of his time now, however, is spent rebuilding Spyker, the sports car business that nearly went down with Saab.

Continue reading Catching up with Victor Muller

Saab 9-5 SportCombi Crash test video

When I worked for Saab, I made a number of videos that were posted to a special Inside Saab channel as part of Saab’s official Youtube channel. NEVS will most likely remove those videos in due course so I’m posting copies to my own channel as well (where I’ve got the original on my hard drive, at least).

I filmed and photographed this crash test of the 2012 Saab 9-5 SportCombi just a few weeks before I left Sweden for the last time. I don’t know for sure, but it’s quite possibly the last crash test Saab did in their lab prior to the bankruptcy.

The test was a EuroNCAP-equivalent 65km/h front offset test with four ‘occupants’ inside the car. Saab would have known the results via computer modelling before they tested this car, but they still had to do the physical test to confirm the results. You don’t want any unknown gremlins causing surprises at the EuroNCAP labs.

As you can see, the 9-5 SportCombi would have well and truly upheld Saab’s legacy for safety.

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If you want to see a little bit more about Saab’s crash test facility, this video from the Inside Saab series we started is a good primer.

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There were ten films in that series but we only got to show three of them due to the production stoppage. The news atmosphere was pretty toxic around that time and it wasn’t considered a wise move to continue showing these ‘feel good’ videos while things were so negative. We planned to resume the series when production started on a sustainable footing, but we all know what happened there.

It’s a shame the rest of the series won’t be seen as they were all quite good. They were made by a small media company based mostly in Stockholm but with connections to Trollhattan and those guys controlled the access to the films.

Saab 99 items on Ebay

Just a quick note to let any interested parties know that I’m selling a few Saab 99 bits on Ebay.

I’ve got three items up there right now, with a few more to be listed over the coming weeks.

On sale right now:

The items are located in Melbourne. They’re spare parts I picked up when I bought the red 99T three door a few years ago.

Happy bidding!

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Movies: Argo

Football season is over, which means it’s movie season.

Mrs Swade and I will be seating ourselves in the cozy confines of the State Theatre from time to time, chewing on some chocolate swirls and enjoying a beverage or two (Hartz cola for me, a glass of merlot for she) whilst taking in some of the latest action on the silver screen.

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Argo tells the story of the escape of US citizens from Tehran at the height of the US hostage crisis from late in 1979 to January 1981. When the US embassy was stormed by Iranian students, six embassy workers managed to escape on to the street undetected and take up residence, in secret, in the home of the Canadian ambassador.

This film tells the story of the CIA plan to get the six people out of the country at a time when Iran was transitioning after the first days of the revolution. Tensions are high and the plan is just implausible enough to work.

CIA agent Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) comes up with a plan to get the group to pose as a Canadian film crew scouting Iran for locations to be used in a science fiction film. The fictional film they’ll be making is called Argo, based on a rejected script from the late 1970s. The CIA ends up sponsoring its own Hollywood production company to build up credibility for the film – the escapees will need a decent, checkable cover story, after all. They engaged real life Hollywood movers and shakers, even staging a public reading of the script to get it covered in the newspapers.

What follows is an action/suspense work of considerable weight with a surprising dose of great one-liners that are well placed and lack the cheesiness you might expect from a Hollywood film. I was certainly surprised by the amount of laughter at our screening, which was full of 40+ year olds. I was even more surprised to find myself laughing along with them.

Argo is based on a true story – de-classified by President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s – and one of the problems with telling true stories is that people will often know the ending before they even sit down in their seat. Still, Argo is drawn out nicely and whilst you know they get away in the end, it’s HOW they get away that keeps you interested – right up until take-off.

The characters manage to surprise you and the casting, which is full of known names, is such that you don’t get carried away with their real-life identities (I’m guilty of thinking “De Niro’s doing a great job in this movie” from time to time). It feels quite natural throughout to engage with the characters in their setting.

Ben Affleck not only does a great job as Tony Mendez, he also takes kudos for a good job in directing Argo (the real film, not the fictional one). Alan Arkin is absolutely superb – and hilarious at times – as the Hollywood director engaged by the CIA to build a production company to give the plot authenticity. John Goodman plays the Academy Award winning John Chambers, who also helps to build the fictional film’s backstory. The other big name is Bryan Cranston, who most will be familiar with from small screen (Breaking Bad, Malcolm in the Middle). He plays Affleck’s CIA boss.

Make sure you stay and watch the first half of the film credits. They show the actors from the film along with the original fake Canadian passports used by the six Americans to get out of the country. The likenesses are remarkable.

The other notable likenesses are the sets and the re-creation of historical photographs from the era, also shown at the end of the film.

Argo isn’t the best film I’ve seen this year but it would definitely be in the top 3. It’s a great story, more remarkable because it’s true, and it’s very well made.

Mrs Swade and I gave it 4 Stars (out of five)

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The original fake poster from 1980:

What’s the collective noun for a group of Aston Martins?

Is it a ‘bond’ of Astons?

Maybe a ‘kill’ of Astons, with owners having a licence to kill?

Whatever it is, the Aston Owners Club of Victoria assembled in the northern Victorian border town of Mildura last weekend and a friend of ours, Ian B, was able to snap some photos of this multi-million dollar collection.

What I really enjoyed seeing in this collection was the number of 1970’s Aston V8’s. I had a friend at high school whose father had one of these. For me, strange as it is, these 1970s cars always said “Aston Martin” to me even more than the earlier Astons that made the brand famous. That’s changed, of course, but I’m still quite fond of what you might call the most British of muscle cars.

My thanks to Ian for sending in the photos. It must have been quite a symphony when these cars fired up.

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A couple of old Holdens

I’ve written a bit about my fears for Holden’s future given the small role the company plays in General Motors’ global portfolio.

I’ll risk sounding like an old country and western song and show you why I fear for them – the old they don’t make them like they used to thing.

I took some of these photos a few months ago at a small-town art festival in a town called Mirboo North, where they had a parade of locally owned classic vehicles going down the street. Two other shots were just last weekend at a local school fair here in Hobart.

These are some of the old Holdens that I love, the types of family car that Holden built much of their foundation on here in Australia (a lot of it was built on racing, too). Unfortunately, that foundation was built largely before they had serious competition from competent car builders elsewhere. Holden, like GM in America, had close to 50% market share in Australia at one point, before Ford got serious in Australia, and before the Japanese came into the market and ate both Holden and Ford’s lunches.

Anyway, these are some of my favourite old-school Holdens, primarily from the 1960s with a ute from the 1970s thrown in as well.

My personal favourite is the EH Holden from around 1963/4. There are two of them in the gallery below, one dark red and the other blue. I’ll take an EH wagon in storm grey, thanks.

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CAR Magazine 50 best from 50 years includes Saab 99 Turbo

CAR Magazine is 50 years old and they’ve just done a special photo shoot featuring their best 50 cars of the last 50 years – including the Saab 99 Turbo.

My guess is that they’ve used Chris’ 99T for this photo shoot, the same black 99 Turbo that Jeremy Clarkson and James May fell in love with on Top Gear.

Fourth row, fifth from the left.

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Also, please note that our American, French, German and English poll winners are nearly all present. The only one missing is the VW Beetle (how the Smart got in there when the Beetle couldn’t is beyond me).

In fact, I think the top two in each of our polls have made the grade (minus the Beetle). They would be:

  • America – Ford Mustang, Chevy Corvette
  • France – Citroen DS, Citroen 2CV
  • Britain – Jaguar E Type, Mini
  • Germany – Beetle (missing), Porsche 911

It seems we’re doing pretty well with our assessments.

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Red Bull Stratos – Felix Baumgartner’s space jump from 128,000 feet.

The Red Bull Stratos jump happened while Australia was asleep, so if you’re an Aussie and missed it, here’s the jump itself from start to finish. The video goes for 14 minutes.

If you were lucky enough to see it live, you might want to watch it again.

I’ve never skydived. I can’t even imagine the fear or exhilaration Felix Baumgartner must have felt. But you don’t have to know how it feels in order to know that what he did today was absolutely amazing.

Congratulations to all concerned.

Tragic killing at East of Sweden

Some very sad Saab community news from Colorado today.

Whilst I’ve heard of the place, I can’t say I know the people at Saab indy repair shop, East of Sweden. I’m still feeling terrible for them today, however.

It seems a 62 year old man (a Saab 9000 owner) went there with an explosive device in his car and a gun in his hand. He’s alleged to have used the gun to shoot 56 year old employee, Mary McGrath, killing her. Police removed and detonated the explosive device safely.

You’d think that by age 62, a guy would have gathered enough life experience to know that whatever your grievance, it can be worked out and the sun would still come up tomorrow. Sadly, for Ms McGrath, that won’t be the case now.

It’s a sad day for Saab people.

via Jalopnik.

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