Spyker jobs in the UK are safe depsite the takeover of Saab
Victor Muller – Spyker CEO – has told Cars UK that the takeover of Saab will not affect UK jobs involved in the production of Spyker Cars by CPP Manufacturing.
The last few weeks have been full of the ‘Spyker buys Saab‘ deal and although there will be plenty to report going forward as Spyker’s plans start to be revealed in detail, we thought we’d have a quiet week or two on this subject. But thanks to Cars UK readers we had a new issue to put to Spyker – will the Saab takeover affect UK jobs?
It’s only a month or two since we reported that Spyker were moving production of their cars to the UK, in to the very capable hands of CPP Manufacturing. On the face of it that seemed to many a strange move. But the reality is that CPP have been making Spykers for a long time and just sending the bits back to Spyker for final assembly.
So the news that full production of Spykers by CPP was now going to take place here was great news for CPP, workers in the engineering sector in the Midlands who would benefit and for Spyker’s customers who would get a car built by the same people who produce for Aston Martin, Bentley and many others.
But we’re ashamed to say that we hadn’t considered what would happen to the deal with CPP now Spyker has taken control of Saab. It took the input of concerned Cars UK readers to question whether this would mean CPP losing the contract and Spyker using the Saab facilities it now controls to build Spykers.
So we asked the question. But questions like this can only be answered by one man – Victor Muller, CEO of Spyker. As you can imagine, Victor probably doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going at the moment with everything that’s going on, so it’s taken us a few days to get him to respond. But respond he has, saying:
“…the Saab deal will have no impact on plans to produce the Spyker C8 Aileron in the UK”
Which is succinct – but he is being pulled from pillar to post at the moment – and unequivocal. So we can say – direct from the horse’s mouth – the Saab deal will have no impact on Spyker production in the UK. Period.
Which should make a few understandably concerned engineers in the Midlands sleep a little easier.
Have your say - leave a comment