After several months of floundering in debt and desperately trying to scrounge together investors in China, Saab is finally calling it quits and filing for bankruptcy. While certainly expected, this is definitely sad news. After suffering at the hands of General Motors, Saab was finally establishing an identity of it's own with the new 9-5 and the 9-4X. Unfortunately, the Swedish automaker just couldn't make it on it's own. One main issue was the fact that though they were independent of the giant, they still relied upon GM for the production of the 9-4X crossover and GM just did not want to hand over the blueprints for one of it's products (the 9-4X is derived off of the Cadillac SRX) and completed products that cost billions to develop to a Chinese company.
According to the Car and Driver blog:
"Saab’s remaining assets will be liquidated by a court-appointed administrator. This includes any production facilities (we expect that the Swedish government or local investors will buy these), tooling, patents, and of course, the rights to the brand itself. In all likelihood, Youngman, Pang Da, or another Chinese company will score the rights to the Saab brand name, and produce new vehicles in China with the Griffin logo. This is similar to what happened with MG and Rover, which live on as Chinese brands."
Source: Car and Driver Blog
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