Saab 9-5 A German Car? - Is This Part Of GM's New Strategy? - Why Does GM Need Saab?

Snide's Remarks; With GM making Saabs everywhere but Trollhattan, Sweden, is the Saab still a Swedish car? And when a new niche Opel is made in Trollhattan will it be quirky?

I always believed that where a car was built really mattered to the buyer, will this "WorldView open the floodgates for "Made in China" automobiles...if WHERE dosen't matter, and WHO dosen't matter and PEDIGREE dosen't matter maybe only PRICE matters, so welcome CHEVY oh excuse me I mean CHERY (sorry Malcolm).

FRANKFURT, May 23, 2005; Reuters reported that General Motors' Adam Opel AG plant in Ruesselsheim, Germany, will build the next generation of Swedish brand Saab's 9-5 model from 2008, an Opel executive told Reuters on Monday.

That marks another feather in the cap for Ruesselsheim, which in March edged out Saab's plant in Trollhattan, Sweden, for the coveted job of making the next generation of GM's mid-sized cars in Europe, successors to the Opel Vectra and Saab 9-3 cars.

The source, who asked not to be identified, said Trollhattan would continue to make the current versions of the 9-3 and 9-5 until 2009.

A GM Europe spokesman said the company had not yet decided where to build the new Saab 9-5 or on which platform it would be based. The successors to the Vectra and 9-3 will use GM's so-called Epsilon architecture.

The spokesman added that Trollhattan in future would not make mass-volume cars but instead specialise on niche models. "That means around 20,000 to 40,000 units per model," he said.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Monday that Saab Chairman Carl-Peter Forster, who is also president of GM Europe, told workers in Trollhattan that their plant might build a high-end Opel car that GM has on the drawing board in Germany.