This morning Paul W. Smith (WJR 760AM) interviewed Spyker CEO Victor Muller about the acquisition of Saab, and the plans going forward.
A few interesting bits, from memory:
"We are going to return Saabishness to Saab" ... "We are going to restore the Saab DNA.""Saab buyers are the most educated in the market, with 67% of them having a college degree or better""Saab buyers are very loyal. We don't need new customers. We just need to get our Saab customers back, who left for some reason.""When Saab customers left, they didn't go to Volvo, they went to Audi and BMW mostly""Saab only needs to sell 100,000 vehicles to be a great company. Audi sells 70,000 units in the US, out of 1,000,0000 produced, Saab can sell 50,000 out of 100,000, and make money!""We have 200 dealers in the US, and that is about right. They have been very supportive."
I don't see Saab becoming a major player, after the damage that GM did to the brand, but it doesn't sound like Spyker expects them to. It sounds like they expect to be a niche product, sitting somewhere between Volvo and Audi. We won't see any more lame badge-jobs like the 9-2 or 9-7, so Saab will be limited to just a couple of products for a while.
