(June 13, 2012) TROLLHATTEN, Sweden — The first vehicle from the new owners of Saab Automobile will be an electric car based on the company's 9-3. The car will go on sale early in 2014, said Saab purchaser National Electric Vehicle Sweden AB and the automaker's bankruptcy administrators today in a joint statement.

The parties agreed not to disclose the transaction price for Saab.

NEVS is led by Japanese investment firm Sun Investment and Hong Kong-based renewable-energy powerplant builder National Modern Energy Holdings. Competing suitors for Saab included Jinhua, China-based Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile, which was in talks since at least February and made a revised bid exceeding 4 billion crowns ($567 million) as late as June 8.

Saab, the maker of the 9-5 sedan and 9-4X crossover vehicle, hasn't built cars since last year following an initial production halt in March 2011. The company filed for bankruptcy in December. Trollhaettan-based Saab has been unprofitable for most of two decades, and General Motors Co., which acquired full control of the manufacturer in 2000, sold it in February 2010 to Dutch supercar maker Spyker NV.

2011 Saab 9-3

The Saab administrators said early in 2012 that a half- dozen parties had shown interest in buying the company.

The Swedish carmaker has hovered near bankruptcy several times, including in 1989, the year before GM bought a 50 percent stake. GM seeking to stem losses, planned in late 2009 to shut Saab, as it did with the Saturn, Hummer and Pontiac divisions in the United States. GM stopped the closure when Spyker CEO Victor Muller persuaded it to sell the brand to him.

After sales peaked at 133,000 deliveries in 2006, Saab sold just 31,700 vehicles in 2010. Deliveries were hurt that year because Saab needed longer than expected to restore production flows after GM emptied the factory and cut the brand's supplier ties, Muller said in 2011.

No sales figures have been released for 2011. Eric Geers, a former Saab spokesman who now works for start-up Chinese carmaker Qoros Auto, estimated in February that the Swedish brand sold 10,000 to 15,000 vehicles last year.

Saab Auto's roots date back to the 1937 establishment of aircraft manufacturer Svenska Aeroplan AB, which began making cars in 1947. The auto business was split from the aerospace operations, now called Saab AB, in the 1990s. About 3,600 people worked at Saab Auto before its bankruptcy, including 3,400 in Trollhattan.

Source: Bloomberg