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Saab, Koenigsegg & The Seventh Seal
- Koenigsegg fallout with Saab echoes Bergman drama
- Christian Koenigsegg literally looks like Death
- Saab may be out of options
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG The Seventh Seal
HAVE yet to sit through Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.
The last time yours watched it – or attempted – I drifted off somewhere shortly after opening credits. There’s something about the warm patina of fuzzy nat sound coupled with grainy black and white footage that envelops you in a comfy sensory blanket.
In the same vein, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is especially cozy.
Back to the Seventh Seal and how it wraps nicely with Saab’s current grappling with the unknown.
The film’s synopsis is simple: a crusading knight (Max von Sydow) returns home to Sweden to find his country plague ridden and Death, himself, waiting. In a coup, the crusader challenges Death (Bengt Ekerot) to a game of chess in a ploy to delay the inevitable for himself and his family.
The irony in this cross platform fiction-reality-film-auto metaphor is first apparent in that Christian Koenigsegg, president of Koenigsegg Automotive AB and main arbiter of Saab’s fate, looks a lot like Mr. Ekerot’s Death. They’re both completely bald, googley eyed, sinister and eerily indifferent to their partner’s fate.
Darker still, the sixth month round-robin between General Motors, Saab, Koenigsegg, and the Swedish Government seem to parallel the crusader’s fateful chess match.
Having briefly interviewed Saab chief Jan Ake Jonsson two years ago, the dry Swedish executive seems anything but the heroic protagonist. Nevertheless, in this case Mr. Jonsson is Mr. Sydow’s knight in the corporate drama.
Mr. Jonsson and his team deserve credit for working overtime to secure the four way negotiations; plying leverage with Saab’s creditors before Swedish bankruptcy courts, participation from Motown execs, and support from the interior ministry to make the improbable, but nonetheless appealing, Koenigsegg sale happen.
Christian Koenigsegg has announced that despite a half year’s negotiations, legal wrangling, and painstaking planning, his eponymous sports car company will not buy iconic Saab.
Barring an eleventh hour savior, without Koenigsegg Automotive it now seems Saab is out of options.
The Seventh Seal concludes when it’s clear that the knight’s lost the match to Death. Out of options and fearful for his wife and child, he appeals to God: “Have mercy on us, because we are small and frightened and ignorant.”
