Saab Automobile

Saab Automobile AB was a Swedish car manufacturer that grew out of a project begun in 1945 by its parent company, the aerospace and defence group Saab, to design a small automobile. After four Ursaab prototypes the first production model, the Saab 92, was launched in 1949, and the car manufacturing headquarters has been in Trollhättan since 1948. The parent merged with Scania-Vabis in 1969, the Saab 900 followed in 1978 and the Saab 9000 in the mid-1980s. In 1989 the car division became an independent company, with General Motors taking half the ownership and the rest in 2000, and in 2010 General Motors sold it to Spyker Cars. It filed for bankruptcy in December 2011, and its bankrupt estate was bought in 2012 by National Electric Vehicle Sweden. It appears in this atlas because the engineer Gunnar Ljungström led the development team for its first cars.