NEVS could be sold off?

[Steve McF]

https://www.carscoops.com/2021/08/saab-assets-owner-nevs-could-be-sold-off-to-xiaomi-consortium/

[Geoff1951]

Isn't the Saab name going the way of MG?  As the years pass, I wonder exactly what any physical assets are worth.  I do feel it's unlikely we'll ever see something that has any Saab DNA.

[sgould]

Rumour has it that there are some Saab design "quirks" creeping into Volvos, as the designers have moved over.

[Audax]

Isn't the Saab name going the way of MG?  As the years pass, I wonder exactly what any physical assets are worth.  I do feel it's unlikely we'll ever see something that has any Saab DNA.

Going? It's gone! The Saab name for cars has been dead since 2014 when NEVS lost the rights to it, you can't buy any products with any link to what SAAB used to produce (except in China) and even then there are indications that you can't actually buy the 9-3EV in China!

When you look at MG they have been selling cars pretty much continuously and even appear to have some design staff in the UK, I even see new MG cars on the road now and then! What was my local Saab dealer is now an MG dealer! (they also do Subaru and still service Saab)

[Steve McF]

I'm actually seeing more and more MGs on the road. Especially that SUV type one (ZS I think).

[welshwizard]

Isn't the Saab name going the way of MG?  As the years pass, I wonder exactly what any physical assets are worth.  I do feel it's unlikely we'll ever see something that has any Saab DNA.

No.  The name and trademark belong to the aircraft and defence company.  The car division was always regarded as an offshoot.

Skoda and Kia have claimed the sort of ground that Saab used to occupy.  The Stinger is aimed to appeal to people who won't buy the big 3 German company, apart from the fact it is RWD or AWD depending on the engine.  The Superb is another candidate, a handsome car, but suffers from the fate of all large VAG saloons - taxi!

As SGould said, a lot of the expertise in Trollhattan went 75km south west to Gothenburg.  That's where a lot of engineers went.  In spite of regular news clips from eSaab but not tangible product from Trollhattan or Tianjin - Volvo come up with Polestar which many commentators have said could've been designed by Saab rather than Volvo (Simon Padian worked for Volvo-Geely for a while).

[Audax]

Skoda and Kia have claimed the sort of ground that Saab used to occupy.  The Stinger is aimed to appeal to people who won't buy the big 3 German company, apart from the fact it is RWD or AWD depending on the engine.  The Superb is another candidate, a handsome car, but suffers from the fate of all large VAG saloons - taxi!

I see a lot of ex Saab owners going to Volvo and Subaru, Volvo because they are Swedish, Subaru as they have the aircraft heritage, turbochargers, rally pedigree and sometimes questionable reliability...

[Geoff1951]

Isn't the Saab name going the way of MG?  As the years pass, I wonder exactly what any physical assets are worth.  I do feel it's unlikely we'll ever see something that has any Saab DNA.

No.  The name and trademark belong to the aircraft and defence company.  The car division was always regarded as an offshoot.

Skoda and Kia have claimed the sort of ground that Saab used to occupy.  The Stinger is aimed to appeal to people who won't buy the big 3 German company, apart from the fact it is RWD or AWD depending on the engine.  The Superb is another candidate, a handsome car, but suffers from the fate of all large VAG saloons - taxi!

As SGould said, a lot of the expertise in Trollhattan went 75km south west to Gothenburg.  That's where a lot of engineers went.  In spite of regular news clips from eSaab but not tangible product from Trollhattan or Tianjin - Volvo come up with Polestar which many commentators have said could've been designed by Saab rather than Volvo (Simon Padian worked for Volvo-Geely for a while).

Well, yes, I did mean the name of Saab as a car maker, which is what the uninformed usually think of when Saab is mentioned.  I know there'sstill a completely separate aerospace company.

[welshwizard]

perhaps I should've added that like Rover, BMW seemed to pass the rights to the name to Ford when MGR went belly up, so that the Land Rover/Range Rover name could be 'protected' from Rover bearing cars from the Far East - hence Roewe....  No such luck for MG.  Saab AB finally said no more after the very short production run in 2014.  Scania denied the use of the Griffin IIRC on those last cars, even though it was being phased out on the NG9-5 and 9-3 Griffin.

[Geoff1951]

perhaps I should've added that like Rover, BMW seemed to pass the rights to the name to Ford when MGR went belly up, so that the Land Rover/Range Rover name could be 'protected' from Rover bearing cars from the Far East - hence Roewe....  No such luck for MG.  Saab AB finally said no more after the very short production run in 2014.  Scania denied the use of the Griffin IIRC on those last cars, even though it was being phased out on the NG9-5 and 9-3 Griffin.

Of mild interest, the Vauxhall badge is a griffin, and was used by them long before Saab existed.

[Steve McF]

The BMW break up of Rover was messy, and I suspect deliberately so. They separated Land Rover and the Rover Group engineering function off and sold the lot to Ford for more than they paid for the entire Rover Group 6 or 7 years earlier.

They kept part of the Rover Powertrain back, and sold it to MG Rover at a later date. They also kept the Swindon Body and Pressings plant, the new MINI (largely engineered by Rover engineers), the Cowley manufacturing plant, and a raft of heritage brands (such as Triumph etc), as well as the Rover marque, which was only licensed to MG Rover, (apparently at Ford's request) so that they could not use it to create any sort of 4x4 vehicle that might have been confused with/or harm the Land Rover brand.

They also retained the rights to the new medium size car which would have replaced the Rover 45, leaving MG Rover without a crucial new model.

Hence why MGR had to focus on the MG brand. When MGR collapsed (which was probably always inevitable, given that BMW had left that part of the company unsustainable in the long term), BMW made even more cash out of the whole debacle, by then selling the Rover brand to Land Rover (Ford), to prevent anyone else from using it.

That denied SAIC/Nanjing, who bought up the carcass of MGR, the chance to buy and use the Rover brand themselves, so they they created the Roewe brand, which is pronounced similarly, and has a badge that is very similar to the original Rover badge!!!

MG Rover had sold the Longbridge site and leased it back, and the writing was on the wall. Didn't something similar happen with Trollhatten??