ADGvast

GM, holding 20 percent stakes of Fuji Heavy Industries (the maker of Subaru brand cars) since year 2000, is going to sell off the shares. 8.7 percent of which has been sold to Toyota while the remaining will be to other investors in the stock market. In the 5 years partnership, Subaru has little common interest with GM. Because of its unique boxer engine / 4WD system, its cars can hardly integrate into GM's global platforms, thus result in no savings of production cost. The only collaboration is selling a version of Impreza as Saab 9-2X in the US market, but seeing the car never take off in sales, now GM admits it is a wrong decision. GM said it sell off Subaru because the two companies have not enough common projects to sustain the alliance.

GM originally planned to derive Saab 9-6X from the Subaru B9 Tribeca. Now the plan is scrapped and GM will continue turning to the future Opel offroader platform which has been previewed as Antara GTC concept car in Frankfurt.

Getting Subaru under its wing, which produced 557,000 cars last year, Toyota will strengthen its domination in home market as well as its challenge against GM as the world number one car maker.

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Yannis

Great news for Subaru fans (where is Martinbo?). GM already has ruined several companies (SAAB for example) , i 'm glad they won't ruin Subaru too.

Deutsch

Good for Saab, but life will still suck for them being owned by GM.

Snake Vargas

I'm not sure this is that good for Saab in any case. They're really stuck in a hard place - yes, they are now free from badge engineering thanks to GM forcing it on them, but unfortunately for Saab GM is hurting badly and they're not likely to get money for much needed product development. I wouldn't be surprised if that company goes down sooner or later.

On the other hand, good news for Subaru. I think they've always been rather resistant to GM trying to flog off their stuff as Saabs, or whatever else - the 9-2X, and rumours of the 9-6X. Good on them for having some sort of integrity. I hope Toyota helps them there, and they can do well.

This is good news, as far as I'm concerned.

bmwrules

We shouldn't be surprised that GM has had a negative effect on both SAAB and Subaru because they have ruined themselves as well.

There is only one car GM makes that I would ever consider buying and that is the Corvette.

Mr. Mercedes

It seems like GM is teetering on the brink of total failure, so this is good news for Subaru. I wonder if its the nail in the coffin for Saab.

Snake Vargas

Do you guys know just how much GM down by? I can't remember where, but I read an article where they lose money on every car they sell anyway. Maybe that's not as bad as it sounds, somehow.. but is it possible that, as big as they are, they could be going down in a big way? It's not the first time a large company died - HIH Insurance and One-Tel in Australia; Enron and, um, Andersen (or whichever one it was) Accounting..? And MG/Rover, of course. Just saying that size doesn't equate to invincibility.

I suppose Saab has been dying for ages, now that I think about it. Cars are quite similar these days already so that relatively unknown niche makers have to fight hard.

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