WEIGL, a Swedish gearbox manufacturer, has fallen under BAIC’s control in the latest acquisition by the State owned car manufacturer. WEIGL was born from the ashes of the GM Powertrain Transmission plant in Gothenburg, Sweden and became a privately owned company, for unknown reasons WEIGL has been sold onto Beijing Auto Industry Corporation.

BAIC paid 310 million Euro for the manufacturer which included the factory, production equipment and IPR to the range of gearboxes that are produced by WEIGL.

After their purchase of the Saab 9-3 and Saab 9-5 platforms, BAIC are eager to hasten the production of the models in China for local consumption under the reborn Beijing Auto brand. BAIC’s chairman, Wang Da Zong, was quoted as saying by Netease as saying that the brand will launch the Saab based models within the year and will be mid to high end vehicles.

The factory that BAIC bought belongs to the German WEIGL group who supplies large quantities of gearboxes to GM, and has a high level of quality.

According to early information, the deal includes F25 and F35 gearboxes as well as production lines and the all important IPR documents.

Xinhua – China’s Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. (BAIC) announced Wednesday that it had purchased all equipment and technologies from a Swedish transmission plant for 31 million euros (about 42.5 million U.S. dollars).

Ma Tongli, deputy general manager of BAIC, said the purchases from WEIGL Transmission Plant AB (WTP) were well worth the cost, as the equipment and technologies allowed it to build a production line which would normally cost 680 million yuan (about 103 million U.S. dollars).

More importantly, BAIC obtained technologies in transmission production and quality control as well as management and training support from the deal, which were of “great significance” to BAIC, said Ma.

The deal came one year after BAIC acquired intellectual property rights from General Motors’ Swedish unit Saab.

State-owned BAIC, the fifth largest automaker in China, acquired the technologies for Saab’s 9-3 and 9-5 car models, turbine engines and gearboxes for 140 million euros in December 2009.

Ma said BAIC aimed to absorb these technologies and forge its own ability in design, development and building of advanced gearboxes during the next five years.