Possible good news for Saab!!

"Henrik B." skrev i en meddelelse news:416528b8$0$217$ snipped-for-privacy@dread11.news.tele.dk...

For those of you who understand German, here's some of the article:

" GM-Chef Wagoner kritisiert Opel-Werk in Rüsselsheim GM-Chef Wagoner kritisiert Opel-Werk in Rüsselsheim

Hamburg - Opel in Rüsselsheim oder Saab im schwedischen Trollhättan noch ist die Entscheidung nicht gefallen, welches seiner europäischen Werke General Motors (GM) demnächst schließen wird. Doch erstmals hat Rick Wagoner, Chef des GM-Konzerns, Stellung bezogen. Dem stern sagte Wagoner in Boston, Opel in Rüsselsheim sei "nicht so wettbewerbsfähig, gemessen daran, wie viele Fahrzeuge pro Stunde produziert werden. Hinzu kämen "Deutschlands strukturelle Probleme. Das ist, wenn alle anderen Faktoren gleich sind, ein Wettbewerbsnachteil für Rüsselsheim.

Die Nachfrage nach Mittelklassewagen reiche jedenfalls nicht aus, so Wagoner, um mehr als eine Fabrik in Europa auszulasten: "Entscheidend dafür, wer den Zuschlag bekommt, wird sein, welches Werk wettbewerbsfähiger ist. Am Verlierer-Standort könne man überlegen, "ob wir ein anderes Produkt finden, das wir dort bauen können."

I read another article in a Swedish paper today (

, not one of the most reliable papers, maybe in the same class as Stern) about how the evening shift workers in Russelsheim go out to a nerby bar during a break every evening to get their Bitburger beer, and even bringing the beer into the factory for later consumption during the work hours. This may be one of the explanations for the quality of Opel cars? I wonder who "leaked" this piece of news? A part of the war between Sweden and Germany?

>>

I don't know if this stills goes on, but about 10 years ago Komet GmBH had a beer wagon in the manufacturing plant that drove around to the different cells. My kind of place.

Dan in Milw USA

The bad news is GM used Saab as example of "bad" management. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, GM outlined how they were going to make more money by reducing the independence of the different units. The 9-3 was mentioned as a bad example. GM said Saab engineers used their own wiring harness and redesigned the engine cradle. In my opinion this was in response to complaints, but GM said it was a waste of time and money. The punishment - most of the Saab engineers were reassigned to to other units. This is the end of Saab :-(

Read the same article. GM is definitely in the process of screwing up SAAB and ultimately killing it.

Dan