Unfortunately, the renderings below refer to the long-gone Swedish maker Saab, which was pulled over after it has had a successful run for so many decades. Now, rumors state that the carmaker might be back on the market with an exceptional model.

This might arrive in the shape of the one envisioned below by render artist Gray Design, which is called the Saab AiroX Autonomous Concept. As the name suggests, it is fully-autonomous and comes with an exceptional design, which has nothing to do with what we have seen so far at Saab models. And this might be indeed the carmaker`s revival.

Chances are Saab would be reborn from the ashes with such an extraordinary are almost zero, but if it does happen, it will surely be a blast.

This one seen here is an extremely futuristic concept, with a lot of aggressive design lines, highlighted by the small grille with two massive air intakes and angular front splitter, way too aggressive than those seen on Lambos, for instance.

Other aggressive styling bits also refer to the standout LED headlights, wide side intakes, razor-thin wing mirrors, sharp side skirts, LED taillights incorporated in the rear end, glass engine cover with two hydraulically-controlled flaps for increase downforce, and more.

As for the inside, the cabin is highlighted by the massive screen with lots of entertainment features, gesture control and so forth.

Yet, for a car maker that doesn’t really make any cars, Saab has a strong presence in the media these days.

One of the reason for the attention is the incarceration of three, yet undisclosed, former Saab executives. The Sweedish prosecutor Olof Sahlgren says that these three individuals are “suspected of aggravated attempts to avoid tax controls”.

Back in 2010 and 2011, they meddled with the company’s accounts to further their own goals. This offence brings up to four years of jail time in Sweden. Back then Saab was already sinking, and maybe the three decided to jump ship while looting as much as they could. By my books, four years is getting off easy.

In the meantime, the smoking ruins of Saab might be rebuilt and re-purposed as an electric vehicle manufacturer by its new owner, NEVS (National Electric Vehicle Sweden), but no final word is out yet.

It will happen this year, at a later and yet to be specified date but, as expected, it won’t be happening in Sweden, at Saab’s regular place of business.

What will happen is that National Electric Vehicle Sweden and the Chinese counterparts that own the brand really need the money so they can’t afford to get back on track with expensive production.

Saab’s production cost issues are pretty notorious by now so the Swedish assembly plant would have ruined any profit margins.

It’s not because they’re killer expensive, it’s just because they’ll be producing and selling the 9-3 again. Now that’s not a bad car, but it’s certainly not the most competitive product on the market.

Aside from making some extra money, the Saab 9-3 production will get the new company in tune with various techniques requested to speed up the process.

That’s how by the time the new electric versions of the 9-3 get produced, as Saab’s been promising, all the niggles will have been ironed out.

Before establishing how tight the bolts should be tightened and such, Saab will have to figure out exactly what plant they’ll use for the production process.

It’s an undecided matter and even though most experts estimate it’ll be the a location in Quingdao, China is not so greatly known for dealing with bureaucracy.

The People’s Republic may want to help as they’re the ones who want half a million electric cars on their roads in the next two years.

The recently bankrupted company was bought out and announced a plan to come back to the public attention via the trendy bits of electric powered cars.

Lovely ambition and everybody is quite happy to see Saab make a comeback even if it’s going to take a few years before it’s ready.

In order to take a bit of a break from the constant cost of development, research, testing and whatever else they need to do before they produce something road-worthy, Saab need money.

Wanting to offset the costs of going electric, Saab will be making a pact with the devil and return to the market earlier in the process.

The pact is that they will be producing a new version of the Saab 9-3, one that will be powered by a more traditional internal combustion engine.

A decision such as this would be quite helpful to the cash flow of the company provided the new owner, NEVS, can work out the details of the supply chain.

It’s not unusual for a supplier to be reticent towards certain customers after they went bankrupt and failed to pay previous bills.

Either way, I have to say I’m pretty interested into how the Saab 9-3 could make a comeback. Let’s not forget that Saab already put quite a bit of work into a new platform for the 9-3.

With that and some new interior toys, the Saab 9-3 could be quite interesting.

Apart from living on forever in the company’s diehard fans, the Saab 9-3 will get to rumble again, as a racing car.

Thanks to some loving hearts and a lot of engineering effort, the Saab 9-3 will soon race in the Swedish Touring Car Championship again (now known as Swedish Elite Racing Championship).

Saab can’t really flip the bill for such a big motorsport project, come to think of it, they couldn’t really flip any bill right now, so other people had to get to work.

The teams running the Saab 9-3 racer are called Flash Engineering and Team Tido. Flash Engineering are also the guys that actually developed the racing car as part of their dream to see Saab vs Volvo on a circuit again.

Financing for the project will come from a load of sponsors and the Saab 9-3 racer will also be backed by the Saab Dealer Organization.

Driving of the new Saab 9-3 racer will be handled by Jan “Flash” Nilsson, Mattias Andersson and Linus Ohlsson. The fourth driver is for the moment missing in action.

Testing will commence next week but we’re not told where this will take place. We expect to hear more after the testing and maybe even some actual specs on the Saab 9-3 racer.

I don’t know about the rest of the contenders but if I were the Volvo S60 racer I’d start getting slightly worried about my competition.

Happily though, that series of doom & gloom moments has been wiped away by how Saab was able to seal the deal with the Chinese at Pang Da and another company from the same country.

Saab being back on track is a great bit of news, but greater still, the company claims that they will also be making three new models.

As part of the agreement Saab signed with Pang Da and Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co the Swedish will have to get cracking on and, eventually, build these three new models that are so tentatively called the 9-1, the 9-6X and the 9-7.

We’re not sure what’s the gain from these three new models coming in but it should be interesting to follow. Perhaps it’s part of a plan to make a better business case for themselves so that the Chinese Government as well as the European Investment Bank will approve the deal.

There have been cases before where deals didn’t get the authority agreements and therefore it is probably good business sense to take this route.

On the less bureaucratic side, it’s very important for us to know about these new cars because they all sound very tempting.

A new Saab 9-1 would clearly be an entry level to the brand, possibly related to the revival of the 92 we’ve heard a long time ago about.

If our assumption is accurate, in a few years time, Saab’s 9-1 could be a rival for the BMW 1 Series and the Mercedes A Class.

The second new model that Swedish designers and engineers will have to come up with is called the 9-6X. Given the company’s name designations and the X at the end of it this could most likely be an SUV.

Possibly a bigger brother to the Saab 9-4X it could be a rival for the likes of the Mercedes GL or it could be a seven seater school-run SUV.

The crown jewel of Saab’s new models would definitely be the 9-7. A Saab 9-7 should be the flagship of the company and the most luxurious car the Swedish will end up making.

Let’s not forget that at this level, the most likely competitors are the BMW 7 Series, the Mercedes S Class and the Audi A8 and since neither of them is willing to let go of market share, there’s a difficult life ready for the Saab 9-7 already.

Saab officially announced that starting Friday, the production will begin with 100 units while by Monday everything will be back to normal, which means 218 units rolled off the assembly line every day.

Saab’s difficult financial situation is not a new story but analyzing the last news it seems that the situation is on a growing trend. According to Victor Muller, CEO of Saab, the company is back in action again after the production has been halted, a statement that makes us think that the Swedish manufacturer will cover the lost ground. The Chinese people from Pang Da Automobile play a very important role in Saab’s comeback as they invested around €30 million in Saab, money that will help the Swedish company to avoid a permanent closure.

Paul Akerlund, the mayor of the city of Trollhättan claimed that if Saab will not produce cars anymore, around 10,000 people will be fired, pretty much considering that the Swedish city has a total population of about 60,000 residents. Another €110 million will be sent from China while Saab has to deliver around 1,300 vehicles to Pang Da Automobile, cars that will be sold in the Chinese market.

Moreover, Saab received a total of more than 8,000 orders, therefore, at least for few months from now, the Swedish manufacturer will have the opportunity to make profit. The main reason Saab halted the production at the Trollhättan part for two months was that the suppliers refused to deliver components as the bills were not paid in due time.

Saab is currently owned by Spyker, the Dutch car manufacturer taking over the lead from General Motors in February 2010. Pang Da Automobile will benefit from a 24% stake as a result of the short-term investment. According to the manufacturer, the first models rolled off the assembly line after the production has been resumed were a 9-3 Independence Edition and 9-5 Aero XWD.

The last we heard from the Swedish didn’t really sound as bad as the usual stuff of recent situations but I wouldn’t exactly be ready to pop the cork with their management.

Saab announced their resuming of production on their cars since they came to an agreement with their suppliers and therefore have the means to roll out cars.

What’s weird about the entire Saab resuming of production is that it is a limited to only one line and only one car, probably the one which is the least brand attributable to them.

This is the Saab 9-4X, the same Swedish SUV that’s based on the American Cadillac SRX platform and that’s just the start of it.

As it happens the Saab 9-4X SUV is built in America and it is not only totally Yankee blooded and it is, ironically, built under General Motors’ umbrella.

The plant in question is the Ramos Arizpe, Mexico facility where, starting today, the Swedish company are going to be making the Saab 9-4X launch a real possibility.

Who would’ve guessed that despite being branded by a Swedish company that is trembling around itself, the Saab 9-4X would some how succeed in being on schedule for a U.S. launch.

Programmed to be seen in American dealerships next month the Saab 9-4X will be very soon available with a naturally aspirated 2.8 liter V6 which costs no more than $33.380.

Another unusual bit of news that can be seen here is how the Swedish plan to keep the more powerful turbocharged 3.0 liter V6 engine within the lineup offerings.

It’s not like people don’t appreciate the 300 horsepower output but how Cadillac removed similarly powered version SRX over concerns of fuel economy and reliability.

Moving past these issues, Saab plans to ride part of the future on this version of the 9-4X and on top of it they want to charge at least $48.010 for giving you such an engine.

I’m happy about how Saab resumed production and that this is actually a good sign for the future of the company but I fear that the 9-4X was probably not the best way to do so.

Also, the sheer joy some people get from saying that GM is now producing more Saabs than Saab is doesn’t really have that much of a grasp on a positive situation.

Saab’s future is still uncertain, but the Chinese may still come to their rescue yet.

The Saab saving optimist in question this time is a company called Pang Da. Even though it doesn’t sound very impressive, Pang Da is actually China’s largest publicly traded automotive distribution chain.

This is part of the clue as to how they will actually be getting involved in the whole “save Saab” debacle. Spyker laid out the ground work for a deal with Pang Da, one which have them shift a lot of Saab metal in the nearby future.

If everything goes well, Pang Da would pay some 43 million dollars for the purchase of what we imagine to be a sizable number of Saab vehicles which they would then proceed to sell in the People’s Republic.

Weirdly the two parties specified the sum to be handed over but there was no mention for the number of cars but there we go. On another positive bit of news for Saab, Pang Da claims they will be laying down another $21 million just 30 days later for the same reason.

The second payment and trade off sees how the Chinese at Pang Da would have the Swedish at Saab subject to certain conditions.

Another plus side of the deal is that Saab’s owners, Dutch sports car maker Spyker would receive an influx of cash of $92 million from Pang Da, in exchange for 24% of the company.

Overall, it seems like everything is starting to look up for the aerodynamic prone car maker that is Saab. A slight hurdle would be how this deal with Pang Da isn’t exactly complete.

The two entities at the moment only have signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” which is as good as a sealed deal, only it’s not exactly that.

If everything goes well, Saab will have a long term partnership to somebody who will be selling their cars in the biggest growing market out there and that could lead to even more financial magic happening.

At the moment, the memorandum of understanding crayons the important aspects of a deal which represents 50 percent ownership of the entire Saab distribution joint venture.

With these sort of figures being thrown around, it’s no surprise to see how the Swedish claim that if this long term partnership is to evolve into Pang Da purchasing a stake in the company, even a majority one, it’s not a problem.

Saab’s ability to handle their products, selling them and eventually making a profit isn’t likely to be used for examples in business colleges around the world any time soon.

The Spyker connection and funding, the influx of money the Dutch were negotiating along side Saab from the Chinese and some of the customer fan base; these are some of the steps to success the company is now missing.

Spyker are still actively involved in finding a way out of this mess for the aerodynamics loving Swedish brand but ever so often the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be getting dimmer and dimmer.

As for the Chinese, original plans to team up with the Hawtai Motor Group fell through, mostly because of the Asian country’s overly complicated bureaucratic system.

Some of you may remember how a while back, GM and Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery didn’t manage to save Hummer because the Chinese government didn’t authorize all of the paperwork for the deal to happen.

Pretty much the same problem is what killed off the good news about Saab signing the deal and resuming production.

A few rumors started circulating lately about how Spyker may have found another hope for their “child” car maker with the help of Great Wall Motor but that has just been dismissed as well.

Not since GM decided to discard Saab have we seen such a delicate situation for the Swedish.

While no actual deals are signed, or anywhere near their full potential, Saab may not be dying just yet since despite their sloppy management, the company is still worth a lot of money.

The brand in itself is worth a bundle but the European dealer network makes Saab a more than attractive financial proposition for the Chinese.

If they manage to get past the Government impaired bidding system their money will eventually help Saab get themselves the sort of funding they need to restore themselves to a former glory enthusiasts still remember.

In the meantime, Saab is grasping at straws for a loan for $41 million with the European Investment Bank and at the same time for the ability sell or lease any of their property holdings.

I want Saab to survive so much I’d be willing for them to be as common as BMW on our roads, even though that will imply losing some of their appeal.