The Future and End of Saab
While many people are still holding a candle for Saab, the reality is that they’ve pretty much come to the end of the road. And unfortunately, it’s not a road untraveled for Saab as they experienced the same financial difficulties a couple of years ago before Spyker came into the fray to save the Swedish automaker. So it’s not surprising that many people are looking into the horizon waiting for the “save” once again, but this time, it doesn’t look like it’s coming. While there is some interest from Chinese investors, the terms of which just can’t be reached.
Saab has a rich and incredible heritage for making amazing vehicles. Jim Ellis Saab has prided ourselves at being lucky enough to have shared that heritage and ingenuity with driver enthusiasts around the state of Georgia and beyond. But now that Saab’s flag sits at half mast, we have to prepare for what looks inevitable at this point. So we created this blog post to share where we are currently and how we plan to proceed as a dealership to our past, present and future Saab customers.
To start, for those that are interested in purchasing a Saab, this is definitely the time to acquire one. The discounts offered are incredibly drastic, but it’s important to also know that at the moment, they won’t come with a warranty and must be sold “as is”, but Jim Ellis Saab of Atlanta will still perform the repairs and maintenance items as you would expect. Jimmy Ellis gives the official statement here. You can also find all of the latest news available from SCNA (Saab Cars North America) here.
The gist of it is if you have already purchased a Saab from Jim Ellis Saab (new or Certified Pre-Owned), the dealership will honor the warranty. If you have a Saab that you did not purchase through Jim Ellis Saab, then we’ll do the repairs for you and process the claim for you as we normally would, but you will be asked to pay for the repairs. You would simply hold onto your receipts until they hopefully put a method of reimbursement into play. This is something that’s typically done by the bankruptcy judge, but it hasn’t occurred yet and there are no guarantees that it will.
Needless to say, we are very disheartened that Saab wasn’t able to make any progress in the talks. And that’s not to say that there won’t be before all is said and done, but at this time, it’s not looking that promising. There comes a time when all you can do is just reminisce and hope for the best.
In what seems to be extremely strategic moves throughout Georgia, there have been multiple locations that have opted to install charging stations for individuals with electric cars. One of the first major installations was 10 years ago at the Discover Mills Mall in Lawrenceville, GA which offered a half a dozen spots in front of Burlington Coat Factory. They apparently jumped on board too early as various Green sites report that they’re not functional anymore. Electric vehicles hadn’t even been widely used at the time and even a decade later, electric cars are still scarce on the road and only now are beginning to be adopted by the public.
It’s surprising that cities like Atlanta don’t utilize this opportunity in some of the many garages in Atlanta to entice employees of companies located in the downtown area to seriously consider electric vehicles for their daily transportation and drastically reduce or in some cases completely eliminate the need for gas and also dramatically reduce emissions.
It appears that we’ve been doing a lot of talking about VW in general over the last month and maybe rightfully so with all of the changes coming down the way. Specifically, the 2012 Volkswagen Beetle and it’s drastic changes that it has in store for Beetle fans and how it’s about to change the demographic that has followed it for years.
