FOLLOWING THE ANNOUNCEMENT last week that General Motors has reached an agreement on the sale of Saab to Swedish company Koenigsegg Group, a video interview with CEO Christian von Koenigsegg has been released.

Mr von Koenigsegg said that, despite appearances, the entire process - from the initial bid through to last week’s agreement - has been “quite fast”, taking only eight or nine weeks.

“From our perspective, it was actually quite fast. It was only about eight or nine weeks ago that we started getting into the details of Saab, and now we’ve reached so far to sign a Share Purchase Agreement.”

While he would not offer specifics on the security of current workers’ jobs at Saab’s offices and production facilities, Mr von Koenigsegg said that Saab employees could look forward to a strong future for the brand.

“We have great plans for the future of Saab. We’ll be doing our utmost to build an exciting, strong company, and of course that’s good for the Saab employees as well.

Mr von Koenigsegg offered some insight into how a small company dedicated to high-performance supercars becomes involved in the takeover of a large mass-market carmaker.

“Koenigsegg Group is the company behind the purchase, not just Koenigsegg the supercar company. The company consists of a group of entrepreneurs; Swedish, Norwegian, American. Within that group, we have the strength, energy and know-how to get the job done.”

“It’s a very unique brand with a great heritage. I heard recently that Sweden has the most innovations per capita, in the world, and that can be seen in Saab’s history and in its products. We want to reinvigorate that, to make it a unique, Swedish, innovative, environmentally-friendly and fun-to-drive brand.”

“The first new Saab coming is of course the new 9-5. I drove it over the Summer and I think it’s a great car, it’s very important to Saab’s future. We also have the 9-3X which has just been launched, and a few other cars coming in the near future that we can’t give too many details on right now.”