General Motors division sells nearly $200 million worth of tooling to Chinese company
China is now in possession of about $200 Million ($197M to be exact) worth of Saab Tooling. Working on a December 31st deadline to find a new buyer for Saab this infusion of cash buys more time.
A couple experts give them another three months of keeping their doors open with this deal. The Swedish car company (owned by GM) has sold the tooling 
(for the 9-5 and some of the 9-3 model) to Chinese car company, Beijing Automotive Industry Holdings, CO., BAIC along with intellectual property rights and powertrain technology. Hey at least they actually "purcahsed" the intellectual property rights this time….
Apparently this is completely separate from the final sale of Saab. Swedish "space-age" sports car company, Koenigsegg, and all 45 of their full-time employees were in line to purchase Saab but talks have fell off the table despite GM naming Koenigsegg (first car sold in 2003) as the preferred bidder.
The deal-breaker is said to be the unusually lengthy amount of time it was taking for them to line up financing.
Now, the two automakers reported to be the lead bidders are another niche car OEM (Dutch-based Spyker Car NA) and BAIC with most experts believing a deal with Spyker to be the only opportunity for GM to dump this brand.
Like orginal Saab suitor, Koenigsegg, Spyker is also a fledgling player in the automotive OEM world and is perhaps even more of a niche brand (see Spyker C12 below left).
In 2008, they only sold 37 of their hand-built cars–six less then they made.
I'm still not sure how "unrelated" the BAIC tooling purchase is to their bid for Saab. Nonetheless, reports claim that Spyker is the only option left in the deal, it would not surprise me at all if GM sold the remaining assets to BAIC. We shall see relatively soon as GM CEO Ed Whitacre is itching to dump this cash leaker. -Joe Brown
T&D Additional Notes:
- Spyker is backed by a Russian banking group–their biggest investor.
- China's BAIC will allegedly modify the tooling slightly to build their own vehicle to brand under the BAIC nameplate
- Will the Saab 9-5 2011 model which apparently made it through tooling/die designs, patterns and castings be modified, or even go to production?
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"…BAIC will allegedly modify the tooling slightly to build their own vehicle…"
They might need to modify the tooling to work in their presses, much like you need to do when moving a die set from one press line to another. BAIC can't modify the tools to make different parts, at least not without significant time and money.
-Danny
http://www.EQSgroup.com
This is the type of thing that will never be displayed on the front page business section….the media doesn't portray the manufacturing industry of Canada and the U.S. properly. When GM is conducting 200Million deals with China it's a sign of how close their relationsihp really is..