General Motors dismissed as “preposterous” a newspaper report on Thursday that the world’s biggest carmaker was trying to sell its loss-making Swedish brand Saab.
“The rumor is totally preposterous. We have stated any number of times over the past several weeks and months how committed we are to the Saab brand and to the people in Sweden,” General Motors Europe spokesman Tony Cervone said.
Swedish paper Dagens Industri reported that GM had contacted several Chinese firms, but also mentioned Renault and Nissan as potential purchasers for Saab.
“In the past month the position on Saab’s future has changed,” Dagens Industri quoted what it called a source with good links to GM as saying.
That was at odds with GM officials who have gone out of their way of late to say they wanted to keep Saab as one of its few global brands and an entry point for buyers of premium cars.
But they have also made clear Saab needs to improve its performance by boosting sales and broadening its product range.
GM is cutting its European workforce by a fifth to stem losses in the region where it last made money in 1999.
GM is due to announce by the end of March whether it will build its next-generation mid-size car at the Saab plant in Trollhattan, Sweden, or at the Opel Plant in Ruesselsheim, Germany.
Models built on the so-called Epsilon architecture include the Opel Vectra, the Saab 9-3 and the planned Cadillac BLS, built specifically for the European market.
The plant that does not get the work will take a serious blow but not necessarily be shut down, GM has said.
Dagens Industri said Saab has lost about 20 billion Swedish crowns ($2.90 billion) during its 16 year marriage to GM and sizeable staff cuts in recent years had made it impossible for it to develop and sell the volumes needed to be profitable on its own.
Production of the new Cadillac BLS will be placed in Trollhattan as of 2006, it said, but would be moved to Ruesselsheim later on.
It would not save Trollhattan in the long run, with GM placing production of the successor to Saab’s 9-5 model in the United States, Dagens Industri added.