Bernie's gone January sales shopping ... for Saab!
- Published on Jan 8th, 2010 by Tess TarossaF1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone is after a January bargain and has made a joint bid for struggling car manufacturer Saab which is currently owned by General Motors. He is making the bid in conjunction with Renault F1 investors Genii Capital. Reading between the lines a bit, does this mean that Bernie and Genii are shaping Saab up to take over the Renault team? We know Renault were desperate to leave after the damaging crashgate scandal, and Saab has experience in rallying which could be transferred into F1. If Kimi Raikkonen can make the switch from F1 to rallying, then it's perfectly possible for Saab to make the opposite switch.
Bernie has said, "It's a good brand that has probably been neglected by the current owners. We don't own it yet, so let's see what happens." A good brand that could benefit from having the brand exposure that comes with owning a team? Mercedes saw an opportunity in Brawn GP, who will soon be called Mercedes GP. By turning Renault F1 into Saab F1, Bernie will be killing several birds with one stone. First, Saab will get the brand exposure at a cut-down price due to Renault's recent bad fortunes on and off track, and hence Bernie's investment will increase; secondly, it's a way out for Renault; and thirdly, it gives Bernie control over a manufacturer in Formula 1 which, given the breakaway series shenanagins of 2009, could prove invaluable in negotiations of the 2012 concorde agreement (when the current one is up for renewal).
Anyway, that's all speculation ... but mark Badger's words, we'll have a Saab F1 team in the near future.
Comments and Discussion
...true until the news has just come out that Bernie didn't get Saab and now the company is going into liquidation...
Doesn't liquidation mean the company is finished?
I really don't get that line of thinking "We're selling off one of our manufacturers because they're not making us any money and we're struggling a bit. Oo, no wait, on second thoughts we're not going to sell them at all even though there are offers and we could do with the funds. we'll shut them down instead which is likely to cost us more money..."
Is that about right?
As for the Bernie-Saab idea. I doubt we'd have seen Saab F1 at all even if his bid had succeeded. In the same way that we'll never see Citroen F1 or Volkswagen F1; the company is not going to improve its image by doing something that doesn't relate at all to their cars; Saab don't have a single RWD car in their range and haven't had so for many many years; their entire range is FWD 4 door family cars, there's nothing sporty or racey about them.
Besides, they've already got a connection to single-seat jets which are the only things in the world cooler than F1 cars, they don't need an image boost!
I once bought a Saab,... best thing is to give them a wide berth.
Bernies deal was probably something like sell me the company and give me X billions in cash and guarantee me X billions in profit over the next 10 years. He probably wanted to prove to Ross that he was still the daddy.