2010 Beijing: The land where Saabs go to retire

By John LeBlanc BEIJING – It’s the first of two media days here at Auto China 2010. And while trolling the massive halls of the China International Exhibition Center, about an hour’s drive outside of China’s capital city, I stumbled across the ghosts of Saab past. As most Saabistas already know, China's Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. (BAIC) bought the old Saab 9-3 and 9-5 tooling for about $200 million U.S. late last year from General Motors, after a it couldn’t to reach a deal to buy Saab outright from the U.S. automaker. Eventually, GM would sell Saab to Dutch super car maker Spyker. Now, it’s not an uncommon story for Chinese automakers to buy older tooling from out-of-date Western models and then do a bit of a styling makeover to at least give the pretense that the car isn’t past its due date. But if you thought the last 9-5 facelift left something to be desired, check out the rhinoplasty BAIC’s pens have conjured up, above, now known as the C71. I guess BAIC is counting on its Sino customers not to care that the new/old 9-5/C71 will run on 11-year-old hardware. The old Saab story, though, doesn’t end there. BAIC has big plans for the stale 9-5 and 9-3. It’s going to build a Chinese factory to make 300,000 examples a year of these old war horses. As Spyker moves forward with the plans to introduce  the new 9-5, 9-3X and eventual 9-4X crossover to Europe and U.S., there’s still no official word if Saab will return to Canada. But now, at least, if you’re still hankering for a new/old 9-5, a trip to China looks like your only option.

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