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Text Chapter 4026 Swedish Aircraft Company

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    In Jia Hongjian's hands, there was a copy of General Motors' financial report for the first quarter of 2008. This financial report contained data on sales of sub-brands such as Saab.  ¡ò According to data, Saab's cars reached a record high sales volume in 2006 with the help of GM's system, with annual sales of 130,000!  Such a number is quite a lot!  We must know that in history, thanks to the financial crisis caused by the subprime mortgage crisis in 2010, the scale of China's auto market officially surpassed that of the United States and became the largest single auto market in the world.  For example, in 2012, China's annual passenger car sales were only 15.5 million.  What is a passenger car?  Passenger cars include ordinary cars, SUVs, business vans also known as MPVs, and minibuses such as Wuling Hongguang, also known as vans.  Adding all these categories together, China, the world's largest car market, sold 15.5 million vehicles in a year. For example, Saab sold 130,000 vehicles in a year, which is definitely a very good result.

    If you want to compare the sales of a certain model in the Chinese market, it would be Ford's Focus.  The Focus sedan sold 120,000 units in the Chinese market in 2012, and the Focus hatchback sold 130,000 units!  So if you think about it, you will know that in 2006, this Saab really entered the ranks of winners in life. It was definitely a best-selling car. You must know that although this Saab entered the Chinese market through GM, in fact, due to publicity and other  For other reasons, brand recognition and sales here in China are very poor!  And Saab also has high-end SUVs like the Saab 9-3, which are priced at 400,000-500,000 yuan. Under such circumstances, its global sales can reach a maximum of 130,000 units, which is really good!

    Seriously speaking, the Saab brand still has great potential. Saab was a merger of Scania and Swedish Aircraft Co., Ltd. The original aircraft company's Swedish abbreviation was saab, which later became the logo of the company's cars.  So in fact, the earliest Saab company made cars and fighter jets at the same time!  For example, the Jas-39 Griffin fighter jet used by the Swedish Air Force is actually produced by Saab Aircraft Company!  The full name of saab is the name of the Swedish aircraft company.  It also shows what this company was originally doing. The family has always been in the airplane business!  For example, during World War II, Sweden's fighter jets were made by Saab.  Later, after World War II, the demand for military aircraft was greatly reduced, and it was impossible for Saab to survive on such a small number of orders.  And seriously.  Although Sweden and the United States were in the same trench at the time, they had no way to sell their aircraft to their European allies. The Americans still expected to make money by selling aircraft. Could it be the Swedes' turn to make money?

    With no other choice, the Swedish aircraft company merged with Scanvia, a domestic manufacturer of heavy-duty trucks, and began to enter the automotive field.  And the experience in design and manufacturing in the aircraft field began to be applied to automobile manufacturing.  Even the first civilian car launched by Saab after World War II was designed by a group of aircraft designers in their company, and the design style and ideas were full of aircraft design ideas. The overall emphasis was on lightweight and stable structure.  It must be safe, aerodynamic, and have a streamlined body!  Even a technology like turbocharging, a technology that will be rampant in later generations, was first pioneered by Saab!  They were the first to transplant the turbocharger device from the propeller engine of a fighter jet to a car engine!

    Then in the 1970s, when global car sales plummeted due to the oil crisis, the Swedish Saab car shined in Europe and became a rising star with reliable performance.  Structural safety, economical and fuel-efficient, this is the same reason why Japanese cars such as Toyota and Honda were able to rise in the past. When other companies' sales plummeted, their sales increased.  But after all, Saab did not become a major automobile group like Toyota and Honda. They encountered a business crisis in the 1980s and began to seek capital injection. In the 1990s, General Motors came to inject capital and purchased part of their shares.  Later, in 2000, he simply married into GM and began to use GM's global sales system to develop and expand a brand like Saab.

    It can be said that without the subprime mortgage crisis that started in the United States in 2007, Saab might not have been able to survive GM's years of cultivation and help.  It can really become a brand similar to Volkswagen's Audi!  You must know that the Audi brand is actually bought by the public!  Audi first started as Audi Motor Company. Later, in the 1920s, it merged with three other car companies. The company's name was changed to "Auto Union" or "auto-union" to produce Audi brand cars. This is why it is now  The reason why Audi¡¯s advertising is still ¡°das-auto¡±.  Although this sentence in German means "this is the car".  Later, in 1966, Volkswagen fully purchased the shares of the "Auto Alliance" with the logo of the Four Rings, and then turned the Four Rings and Audi into a sub-brand. After that, the name "Auto Alliance" ceased to exist.  .

    ¡° Volkswagen can make Audi a mid- to high-end car brand, so why can¡¯t GM make Saab like this?  Other?The future was originally very good, but it is a pity that the subprime mortgage crisis caused by American financial guys!  The loan crisis allowed Saab to reach its peak sales in 2006, but it began to decline in 2007.  According to the data in the financial report, Saab sold 130,000 cars in 2006, but only sold 90,000 cars in 2007!  In the first quarter of 2008, it seems that the estimated sales data for the whole year will be worse than that of 2007, and may only be maintained at 60,000-70,000 units!  Sales have been cut in half in two years!  It can be said that Saab suddenly realized the pain of its competitors in the 1970s No!  Nowadays, Sabon is no longer owned by Swedish Aircraft Company, but is owned by General Motors, so General Motors has experienced another sales decline similar to the oil crisis in the 1970s!

    For GM, a sub-brand with annual sales of 130,000 vehicles worldwide is really a small brand.  Take Ford's Focus as an example. The Focus hatchback can sell 130,000 units annually in a single market in China!  If you include the sedan, then a model like Focus has sold 250,000 units in China!  This is a model, not a sub-brand!  If you really include the annual sales volume of the entire Ford brand in China, it is estimated to be nearly one million!  Globally, not to mention sales of tens of millions, the sales of three million vehicles are the same as playing, right?  This is the strength of big brands that other car giants value!  Therefore, when a brand like Saab encounters a crisis at GM, it must be sold for money!

    At the same time, on the other hand, Saab did play a major role in the losses during this crisis. It¡¯s funny to say that during the last oil crisis, Saab was not affected at all, and instead became a rising star.  As a result, this time we encountered a crisis, and Saab became the culprit!  Why is Saab the culprit?  First of all, after GM took over Saab, it adopted platform development and modular development methods because it followed the trend.  Although this platform-based modularization sounds like a very correct path, after all, you can create many models just by trying to improve the model, but the problem lies in how to achieve platformization and modularization. This requires crossing the river by feeling the stones!

    When we first entered the 21st century, large American automobile groups pushed hard for platform and modular development. After all, Ford Motor Company in the United States was the first to develop an automobile assembly line, making the United States the country with the largest automobile production in the world.  of!  Americans are quite persistent and adventurous in improving production methods.  But the problem is that having an adventurous spirit is a good thing, but taking risks may not necessarily lead to finding treasures every time!  For example, when they first tried platforming and modularization, GM and Ford took the wrong path. They chose a strategy of allowing each sub-brand to have several platforms!  For example, Saab has selected two platforms, 9-3 and 9-5, for development.  But the problem is that actually every platform development costs a lot of money!  Because the adaptability of each platform must be considered, and many types of cars must be made on this platform in the future, so it must take more energy and money than the development of a single model!

    A lot of money has been invested in platform development. How the sales will be will be known in two years!  This thing is risky!  If you really want to be shameless just to make money, you should try to reduce the number of platforms as much as possible. Several sub-brands share one platform, just like what GM did in later generations. The Chevrolet sedan is actually the platform of other sub-brand sedans. Change it.  Just straighten up your face, straighten your skin, put it into production in Korea, put it on the Chevrolet brand and sell it for money. Only in this way can you reduce risks, lower costs and make money!  Being too honest in business is sometimes not a good thing!  A lot of money was spent on two platforms for Saab and two or three platforms for Chevrolet. When the economic crisis hit, the sales of sub-brands dropped sharply. What about the massive funds invested in platform research and development?  I can¡¯t make any money back!  Isn¡¯t this a waste of time to go to grandma¡¯s house?

    This is a bit like a Hollywood film company investing one to two hundred million US dollars to make a blockbuster. This is inherently risky. If a company ignores everything and starts shooting ten blockbusters at the same time, investing US$100-200 million each.  , if there is a crisis that causes the film market to shrink drastically, and the ten films it produces all fail to do well at the box office after they are released, then won't the film company have to pawn off all its losses?

    And having said that, in Jia Hongjian¡¯s opinion, if ordinary people really buy the Saab brand, they may not be able to make money for him!  It may not be possible to turn a loss into a profit!  (To be continued.)
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