Are GM trying NOT to sell Saab?

We’re beginning to wonder if GM actually wants to sell Saab. There have been one or two very serious offers, but GM seem to be putting obstacles in the way of a sale.

We first began to wonder if GM really wanted to move Saab on when the well-funded and completely kosher offer from Koenigsegg was shown the door. The official line was that there were irresolvable obstacles. The unofficial line was that GM was unhappy about Chinese car maker BAIC having a small piece of the action and taking GM tech off to China to exploit.

That theory had a couple of holes blown in it when GM then turned round and sold the old Saab tech to BAIC anyway in the form of tooling and rights to the old 9-5 and 9-3. True, it wasn’t GM’s latest bits of kit, but it seemed a bit two-faced.

Then we had the Spyker offer for Saab kicked in to touch, on the very same day we learnt that Victor Muller – Spyker’s boss – was very bullish about the deal and thought the offer too good to refuse. But GM threw up obstacles to that deal as well. Despite that, Spyker came back with a new offer for Saab said to address all the objections raised by GM. And now it looks as if that offer is being given short shrift by GM as well.

GM Spokesman Chris Preuss has said:

“At this point, GM has no plans for any further announcements regarding Saab. If anything changes or if any new deal or actions arise, we would certainly communicate them, but right now there’s nothing to communicate.”

Which pretty much says to us that GM are not actually interested in selling Saab. Could it be that they think the new Saab 9-5 and the soon to be ready Saab 9-4X are just too good? Would they rather destroy a big chunk of Sweden’s Automotive industry than live with the competition from the 9-5 and 9-4X going forward?

We can’t see any other reason. From the outside both the Koenigsegg offer and the Spyker offer seemed credible. It’s starting to look as if GM have decided that if they can’t have Saab no one else is going to either.

Which is a crying shame.