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On October 28 (it was that recent?) I posted an article about the status of SaabUSA’s European Delivery Program. In that post, I quoted an email from a SaabUSA representative, which read as follows:

At this time, the Saab European Delivery Program is no longer available and Saab has no future plans of re-establishing this program.

Taking my lead from this Saab representative, I headlined the article “SaabUSA cancel European Delivery Program….” because when someone says something is no longer available and there’s no plans to resurrect it, then I take it as being cancelled.

It seems the official line has changed somewhat since then, which is a good thing (and I hope that initial representative is being retrained as we speak).

In comments to that article, SaabUSA’s PR guru Jan-Willem Vester wrote the following in response:

While it is true that, given the current business climate and negative Krona vs. Dollar exchange rate, there is currently no defined plan to reestablish the European Delivery Program, Saab Automobile USA has never said nor confirmed that this program has been canceled indefinitely. Just for the record!

Like many of you, we at Saab USA all hope that the business will turn for the better in the foreseeable future – enabling us to offer our customers “the vacation of a lifetime” including picking up their Saab on the continent of origin. Thanks for bearing with us.

Further to this, there’s been a new comment posted there from “Robert”, who received the following from Jaye Trice, an administrator with International and Diplomatic Sales with SaabUSA:

GM has the program on hold until the first of 2009. Although nothing has been decided on the direction of the program, I won’t have any clue until then.

I hope our program is ready when you are ready for your purchase…..

I’m not sure how much the EDP crosses lines with IDS, but it’s good to see that at the very least, the SaabUSA guys who have to put their names to emails are on-message, and that the future of the EDP doesn’t seem to be written in stone just yet.

I agree with some commenters that promoting this scheme a bit more instead of slapping more cash on the hood might be a good strategy. If Saab want to remain in the public’s mind as an entry level European premium brand then a scheme like this is a fantastic compliment to the cars.

My thanks to Jan-Willem for taking the time to address the issue in comments. I hope we hear some good news about this soon.

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