Despite deep skepticism about the value of Saab’s latest “alliance” with the Chinese dealer group PangDa, it seems that the Swedish automaker will restart production next Wednesday. SaabsUnited translates a DI.se report

“I expect the plant to begin production on Wednesday of next week since they’ve come to the Saab on Tuesday this week,” said Gunnar Brunius, Purchasing and Production Manager at Saab Automobile to DI.

On Tuesday, he initiates the process of agreeing with Saab’s 800 suppliers so that they start to deliver the components again after a six-week shutdowns.

The major suppliers, including IAC, Sweden, Plastal and car seat manufacturer Lear, are invited to personal meetings, while many other contacts are handled through e-mail.

Saab will reportedly restart production at a rate of 230-240 cars per day, but first it will have to pay off suppliers. We’ll see if that actually gets accomplished before we take this report too seriously, especially since CEO Victor Muller has admitted that negotiations with suppliers could take “several weeks.” But, Muller tells Saab employees that “we will never give up,” so who knows how long Saab’s death throes could last.

Rick Kranz, product editor at Automotive News, had an epiphany: “To understand Victor Muller’s obsession with China, you need to understand where that market is headed,” Kranz wrote. Ok, enlighten us, sensei. Where is it headed? Read More >

Victor Muller is getting desperate. Hard up for cash, he is willing to sell 24 percent of Saab to a car dealer in China. It’s not any car dealer, but Pangda, one of the larger chains in China. According to a Spyker press release, Pangda has “over 1100 dealerships nationwide”, according to Pag Da’s own profile (see below) is has about half of that. Be it as it may, it is a dealer group, not a larger automaker. Not even a smaller one. Read More >

Editor’s note: Car News China has some pictures of the Dongfeng EQ250 in police livery, accompanied by the nearly-unbelievable tale of the HMMWV’s Sinification, which we have excerpted here. Do surf over and check out one of the better Chinese car blogs out there.

AM General tried to sell the HMMWV to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the late 1980′s.

The PLA however had no interest in the vehicle by that time, they thought it too big and heavy. AM General left one HMMWV in China, hoping the Chinese would change their mind. They did after the first Gulf War in 1991 when the HMMWV was on every TV screen in the world, seen as a winning vehicle that could cross every desert.

Read More >

When we heard that Saab’s deal with the Chinese automaker Hawtai had fallen through, our initial reaction was a complete lack of surprise. My take was that Saab’s attempts to seek Chinese White Knight from the ranks of that country’s smaller automakers was doomed to fail, as the Chinese government has made it clear that it would like to see its auto industry consolidate. As with all things Chinese, however, I should have consulted more closely with Bertel before writing. Our man in China was quick to point out that the Beijing scuttlebut blamed Saab’s lack of intellectual property, rather than government consolidation rules, was to blame for the collapse of the Saab-Hawtai deal. And sure enough, Automotive News [sub] reports today that

Sweden’s Saab Automobile failed to secure investment from Hawtai Motor Group because of “commercial and economic realities,” not a lack of government approval

And, it turns out that’s the nice way of putting it…

Read More >

Saab’s deal with the Chinese automaker Hawtai has failed in a predictable manner, as the struggling Chinese partner apparently didn’t receive government approval for the deal. Saab-Spyker’s announcement of the deal’s collapse explains [via AN [sub]]

Since it became clear that Hawtai was not able to obtain all the necessary consents, the parties were forced to terminate the agreement with Saab Automobile and Spyker with immediate effect. The parties will continue their discussions about a possible cooperation, however now on a non-exclusive basis

This isn’t the first time that the Chinese takeover of a Western brand failed due to the Chinese government’s insistence on industry consolidation, as the Hummer-to-China deal failed for similar reasons. Meanwhile, we should have seen this coming a mile away…

Read More >

One of Bertel and my favorite Chinese car blogs, ChinaCarNews, has been reporting since October than the next-generation of MG/Roewe midsized sedans would be based on GM’s Global Midsized (Epsilon II) chassis (which underpins Buick LaCrosse/Regal and the new Chevy Malibu), and now the rest of the media appears to be catching up. From InsideLine to Autocar, everyone’s running with the story that MG/Roewe, which is owned by GM’s main Chinese partner SAIC, is working on an Epsi II-based MG7 for launch in the 2015 timeframe. According to InsideLine

[In 2015], the MG7/Roewe 750 sedan replacement appears some 15 years after the debut of the Rover 75 they’re based on. A coupelike four-door, it uses GM’s Epsilon platform and will be powered by 2.0 and 2.4 four-cylinder gasoline engines and a 1.9 diesel, all with dual-clutch transmissions.

GM and SAIC signed a Memorandum Of Understanding back in October [.DOC file here], which included the provision that, in addition to developing a next-gen electric architecture,

SAIC and GM anticipate sharing an additional vehicle architecture and powertrain application in an effort to help reduce development costs and benefit from economies of scale.

This could explain MG/Roewe’s rumored use of the Epsilon II chassis, but for the moment GM dismisses these rumors as “speculation.” And no wonder: even GM hasn’t announced when it will offer a dual-clutch transmission in its Global Midsized platform. Chances are, The General will want to offer that combination before its Chinese partners use it to beef up its MG/Roewe brands, which have been in product rehab for some time now.

Saab has started paying suppliers again (although production hasn’t restarted yet), and CEO Victor Muller is once again all popped-collar confidence as he dismisses the “speed bump” that he blames on negative publicity. But behind Mueller’s yacht-club breeziness and talk of “true Saabs,” major changes are afoot in Saab’s business model. Saab’s deal with Hawtai, the product of a desperate search for support in the midst of a liquidity crisis, has changed how Muller sees the global car business, and as a result he’s shopping what may be Saab’s last meaningful asset: Western dealerships. Muller explains his thinking to Automotive News [sub]

We laughed when the Japanese came. We laughed when the Koreans came. But we will not be laughing when the Chinese come. The Chinese are like a steamroller. It took 67 years to build up our dealer network. It is the biggest asset not on our asset sheet, and these guys buy into it for free. If they make the proper cars, can you image how much simpler it will be to push product through the distribution network that is already there? It is like a railway network that is already there.

Bertel and I have a running bet about whether the first actual Chinese import to the US (not a converted glider) will be a Chinese brand or one of the western brands… but it’s not much of a bet because neither of us can ever commit to picking one brand that seems most likely to bust America’s Chinese car cherry, and our “bets” change on a weekly basis. In any case, though, think it’s safe to say that neither of us saw Saab as playing much of a role in any of the scenarios we’ve discussed.

Read More >

Honda revealed prices for their „Chinese Brand“  Everus S1.  As reported before, these “Chinese brands” are brands created by joint ventures, based on (usually not the latest) foreign platforms, filled with parts of foreign pedigree, and as much Chinese manufacture as possible. Supposedly, these brands are targeted at the lower income brackets. They better start saving. When the concept was launched, the target price for the cars was under $10,000, but what is going on sale is consistently over that. Read More >

Our patent pending GM China sales oracle saw it coming: GM China was down in April, therefore, the whole Chinese market had to be down in April. And so it was – by a hair: April new vehicle sales in China were down 0.25 percent, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers announced at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon. This is the first decline in 27 months. Read More >

While Michigan Senators, aided by the Detroit News, are chasing their own tails complaining about Chinese EV draft regulations that only exist in rumor form, a major European manufacturer practices Realpolitik and covers all possible bases: Volkswagen appears to launch an indigenous, all-electric brand for China, and (at least for the time being), for China only. Read More >

Just over one week ago, a Detroit News piece pointed me towards a letter written by Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, which took China to task for considering draft legislation that might possibly require more technology transfers to Chinese companies as a precondition to market access. Having chased down both the letter and the US National Trade Estimate it was based on, as well as several reports on the draft legislation itself, I wrote a lengthy piece about how Senators Levin and Stabenow were rattling the saber about what appeared to be a complete non-issue. In that piece, I not only debunked the senators’ concerns, but I also pointed out that China’s local consumer EV subsidies were the far more worrying potential trade barrier, as we have been hearing that they require that all qualifying EVs be built in China and sold with Chinese brands (a condition at odds with at least the 2004 version of China’s Auto Industry Development Plan, which stated “local governments should encourage fair competition among motor vehicles made by different places on the local market. They are not allowed to carry out any discriminative policy or measure which may lead to discrimination against non-locally manufactured automobile products.”). And it turns out that my 2,000+ words didn’t put everyone to sleep, as a new DetNews piece re-reports the Stabenow/Levin letter with the inclusion of a new motivation never mentioned in their actual letter, to wit:

For electric or plug-in vehicles to qualify for incentives under the proposed rules, they must be produced in China — by a Chinese carmaker or in a joint venture with a Chinese company

Ignoring for a moment that this wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the letter, there’s another issue here: subsidies aside, building any car in China requires a joint-venture. More importantly, China need not establish any barriers to the sale of imported plug-in or hybrid cars for the simple fact that the Toyota Prius’s epically weak sales there prove that imported NEVs can’t compete in the market. Of course subsidies may change that, but even more important is the issue of registration limits: if China requires EVs to be locally-made in order to waive Beijing’s registration restrictions, that could create more of a barrier than any cash subsidy. Meanwhile, neither Daimler nor Toyota nor VW nor BMW seems to have a problem with building EVs locally under a JV (cost and supply chain make Chinese production the logical choice anyway, necessitating a JV). The DetNews (and presumably Senators Levin and Stabenow) are getting closer to understanding the problems with China’s New Energy Vehicle Plan, but it seems they may yet have some more TTAC reading to do.

BMW can’t make cars fast enough in China. Chinese customers must suffer through interminably long delivery times for their imported Siebener. To solve this problem, BMW is building a second production plant in China together with its joint venture partner Brilliance, to be opened in 2012. The plant is already too small. Read More >

Some people are still worried about the Chinese trade imbalance. They should look at the car industry. Car-wise, China’s trade is shockingly imbalanced, a report of Chinas automotive industry association CAAM shows. Read More >

That was fast. Barely has it been announced that China’s Hawtai/Huatai will take an interest in Saab, new Saab 9-5s are already arriving at Chinese Hawtai dealers. CarNewsChina has the picture, while neither Saab nor Hawtai have the necessary permits. Permits-shmermits … Read More >