General Motors plans to decide auto unit's fate next week

General Motors said it could decide next week to close its Saab Automobile unit after the Swedish company that planned to buy the brand backed out.

It was the third time in less than two months that the sale of a GM brand has been called off, reflecting the difficulty of selling underperforming divisions in the midst of a global sales slump.

GM said on Tuesday that its board planned to determine next week what to do with Saab. Closing the brand, as GM initially planned to do if it could not find a buyer, is a strong possibility, two people with direct knowledge of the company's plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the board had not made its decision.

The other options for GM are to seek another buyer or keep Saab, though both those steps are considered less likely.

When Penske Automotive terminated its deal to buy Saturn in September, GM immediately announced that the brand and its dealerships would close.

Koenigsegg, which agreed to buy Saab in June, issued a statement attributing its decision to GM's moving too slowly.

"The time factor has always been critical for our strategy to breathe new life into the company," Koenigsegg said. "Unfortunately, delays in closing this acquisition have resulted in risks and uncertainties that prevent us from successfully implementing the new Saab business plan."

Officials at GM, who were caught off-guard by the deal's collapse, denied responsibility. "We negotiated in good faith and we met all our timing obligations under the agreement," a GM spokeswoman, Renee Rashid-Merem, said.

"We're obviously very disappointed with the decision to pull out of the Saab purchase," GM's chief executive, Fritz Henderson, said in a statement.

GM backs out of deal

Three weeks ago, GM backed out of a deal to sell its European operations, Adam Opel, to a Canadian parts supplier and Russian bank.

It has a tentative deal to sell Hummer to a Chinese industrial machinery manufacturer, but the Chinese government has not given its approval.

Meanwhile, the Ford Motor Co. spent nearly a year shopping around its Swedish brand, Volvo, before entering into exclusive talks with the Chinese carmaker, Geely, last month.

John Casesa, an auto analyst with the firm Casesa Shapiro Group, said the collapse of the Saab and Saturn deals was more a symptom of the state of the automobile industry than of any missteps by GM.

"Saab is a weak brand in a market where there are no buyers," Casesa said. "Car companies are in no mood to buy anything and financial sponsors aren't able to buy anything. Saab wouldn't be an easy sale in a good market."

Saab, which filed for bankruptcy protection in Sweden in February, has been a perennial money-loser and is among GM's smallest brands, with sales of 93,000 vehicles worldwide last year.

It is on pace to sell fewer than 10,000 vehicles in the United States this year.

Closing Saab would cost GM considerably less than it is spending to shut down Saturn, analysts said, and failing to sell Saab is not expected to affect GM's post-bankruptcy recovery.

GM paid $600 million for half of Saab in 1990 and $125 million for the rest in 2000. Terms of the deal with Koenigsegg have not been revealed, but it was contingent on $600 million of financing from the European Investment Bank and Swedish government guarantees.

Joran Hagglund, the Swedish secretary of state for industry, said on Tuesday that it was too early to know if it was the end of the line for Saab, but he said that there was no chance of the government stepping in.

Nick Bunkley, New York Times News Service. David Jolly contributed from Paris