'Old Pang' spends another €15 million at Saab

Pang Da pay €15 million up front for a further 650 Saabs

Pang Qing Hua - Pang Da boss - thinks Saab are 'Great, great, great'!

China’s Pang Da has bought a further 650 cars from Saab with an upfront payment of €15 million. They paid €30 million for 1300 Saabs last week.

The ‘Old Pang’ bit isn’t our derogatory name for the head of China’s Pang Da – who are busy getting in to bed with Saab – but is how the Beijing Times referred to Pang Da boss Pang Qing Hua on his return from Saab; ‘Old Pang Returns from Sweden’, they said.

We have no idea how old Pang Qing Hua is, but he’s old enough to have amassed a few bob from owning a huge car distribution network in China, and is flush with cash from a recent floating. And he seems to love Saab.

Asked by reporters on his return to China what he thought of Saab he simply said “Great, great, great.” But he did go on to add that “It could be said that Saab’s current situation is not that bad, the production facilities are world class, Saab did not lie to us”.

Which might explain why Pang Qing Hua seems to have had no hesitation in authorising the second raft of purchases from Saab. Just last week Pang Da paid Saab €30 million for 1,300 cars and today they paid another €15 million – up front – for a further 650 cars.

Not surprisingly, Victor Muller is grinning from ear to ear at the moment. He said:

“I am delighted that Pang Da, as previously planned, has ordered an additional 630 Saab vehicles. This not only shows the potential for the Saab brand in the Chinese market, but also that in Pang Da, we have found the right partner. I look forward to the next step in our business relationship when we set up joint ventures for distribution and, at a later stage, production in China together with a still-to-be-named manufacturing partner.”

In a related bit of news we also learn that Hans Go – Spyker CFO – has upped and gone from Spyker. Which considering all that’s now left of Spyker is Saab (with it’s own CFO on the way), having flogged the sports car business of Spyker to CPP manufacturing and Valdimir Antonov, poor old Hans was surplus to requirements.

Onwards and upwards.