(May 27, 2011) TROLLHATTAN, Sweden — Saab Automobile today restarted assembling cars at its production facility in Trollhättan. A first batch of around 100 cars is planned for this first day of production since it closed up shop on April 5.

Saab was pushed to the brink of collapse as it ran out of cash to pay suppliers, halting production on April 5 and leaving Dutch owner Spyker Cars scrambling to line up new financing.

"Production has restarted. Saab will make 100 cars on Friday and will reach a normal level of production of 218 cars on Monday," Spyker chief executive Victor Muller told Reuters.

Would-be partner Chinese car distributor Pang Da, whose CEO Pang Qinghua was visiting the Trollhattan plant on Friday, has already provided Spyker with an advance payment of 30 million euros in exchange for Saab cars to be sold in China.

Pang met Sweden's industry minister and the Debt Office on Thursday. Sweden has guaranteed a loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to Saab, so has to agree to any shareholder changes, as does the EIB and former owner General Motors Co.

Muller and Pang were both present to see the restart of production as the first two cars, a 9-5 Aero XWD and 9-3 convertible, rolled off the assembly line.

"This is a great day for our company and it is great to see the plant running again. We have gone through a rough patch in recent weeks, but Saab is back in action again,'' Muller said in a statement.

Saab said in a press release that with production restarted, the company will now focus on building and delivering the thousands of cars ordered by customers around the globe. As the assembly line was fired up again, the total number of outstanding orders from markets worldwide for the Trollhättan factory amounted to over 6,500 cars.

The total order bank, including around 1,600 Saab 9-4X orders, amounts to over 8,100 cars. This number includes the almost 1,300 cars that were ordered by Pang Da Automobile.

Pang Da is waiting for regulatory approval at home for its planned rescue of Saab in a deal worth up to 110 million euros ($153.7 million).