Junk before ...

Gonna be junk after. Ain't nobody I know liked working on Saabs (well, except for my buddy Vinny who made a cottage industry out of being a Saab specialist). The "backwards engine" idea was the best. Try changing accessory belts (normal maintenance) in any amount of time when you got an inch between them and the firewall. Anyway, it looks like Saab is going the way of Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Saturn as failed GM divisions:

PARIS - The outlook for Saab took a turn for the worse on Thursday, after the automaker’s Dutch owner said that it was unable to pay employees their June salaries and warned that the prospects for obtaining short-term funding were uncertain.

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The announcement Thursday dashed hopes that recently announced deals with Chinese partners would turn Saab around. Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile has agreed to pay €136 million, or $195 million, for a 29.9 percent stake in Swedish Automobile, the companies said June 13. That deal came on the heels of the announcement in May that Pang Da Automobile Trade would pay €109 million for 24 percent of Swedish Automobile.

The companies have portrayed the deals as game changers offering access to the Chinese auto market, the world’s largest. But industry analysts have expressed skepticism that those cash injections, assuming they are approved by the Chinese authorities, are of a sufficient scale to fix Saab.

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It's time to let it die a somewhat dignified death, as opposed to letting the Chinese turn it into a bigger piece of junk than it is now.