An Open Letter of Support from Fans and Owners of Saab Cars

 For several months I'm in occasional with Brandon, the moderator of Saabbit, the Saab section of reddit. An e-mail landed in my mailbox about a petition, he's putting together. The idea is to show to the new owner of Saab that we, the fans of Saab are still here and ready to buy a new Saab if it would come.

The key part of the petition is this :

"All we ask is this: that National Electric Vehicle Sweden work to return Saab to its former and rightful presence in European and North American markets. We understand the challenges of the global economy, as well as the importance of new markets such as China. It is only right that Saab seek to establish a strong presence there. However, there are also countless, passionate Saab fans right where we have always been - Canada, continental Europe, the UK and the US. Please keep Saab in these vital markets as well. You do that, and we'll rally behind Saab like never before."

I don't know if it helps. It seems, that the business plan at NEVS is done. And we, the public, don't know much about it. Only fragments. And I agree with the opinion, that SAAB will never be the same as it was before.

But.

The thinking, that NEVS ignores the strong (though slowly fading) community spirit behind the SAAB brand, seems too shallow to me. Yes, the sales numbers behind are unpredictable, but there must be someone in NEVS, who sense this and has ability to turn it out into successful sales. So if the voice of the fan community can be stronger through this petition, than it makes sense.

That's why I signed it and posting it here on Saabism. You can see / sign the petition in the link below as well as see the discussion about it.

The petition | Discussion on Saabbit

P.S. Once I worked for a global IT company (Sun Microsystems), which planned to discontinue one of the versions of its very strong operating system (Solaris for x86, for PC servers). Reason : unprofitable. After the announcement thousands of open letters worldwide came to the company. As responsible for this in a small country, a couple of them landed in my mailbox as well. They all were forwarded to the product responsible group.

The fan community around was similar strong as at Saab.

The result : we continued with it. And not only that. We could turn out additional profit of it as many customers finally bought support service for it, continued to run it on their systems and bought additional servers from us.

It's maybe a bit of idealism behind it. However as the communities behind brands become more and more important in todays world, I don't think NEVS will ignore it.