Warranties issued by Saab will be honoured irrespective of the future of the Swedish car brand.

Even though General Motors has still to decide between sale or closure, fleets should have no concerns over warranties, servicing or repairs.

“GM is obliged to provide the full warranty cover for any product it has sold and I can assure fleets that it has easy capability to do this via Saab or other GM retailers,” said Saab GB managing director Johnathan Nash.

“Under European law, the company is also obliged to make parts available for 10 years after the cessation of any car product line – so I’d say that owners have nothing to worry about in this respect.”

As the US board continues to assess a final takeover bid by Dutch sports car maker Spyker Group, Nash added: “We may not be there to look after Saab cars in future, but there will be no shortage of people to carry out any work that may be needed and the high level of carryover technology between European GM products will make this easy.”

Nash said fleet sales of Saab had almost ground to a halt after the uncertainty prompted negative premiums to be dialled into residual values early last year.

At the BVRLA, spokesman Toby Poston said: “If Saab does go down, our members will continue to provide fully-serviced vehicles, even if they have to make use of non-franchised dealers and as 85% of cars on lease come with a maintenance contract, this should not be a problem. Residuals will suffer but customers will be protected because our members will take the hit.”

CAP manufacturer relationships manager Martin Ward added: “There is a natural expectation that prices will collapse, but taking MG Rover as an example, values rallied after initial falls because the cars looked such good value.”