Some 3,500 employees returned to the Trollhättan plant Monday with the aim to get the iconic car marker back on the road.

After a seven-week-halt and months of uncertainty production at the Saab plant in Trollhättan was restarted Monday 9:17 am – with Dutch sport carmaker Spyker as the company's new owner.

“Our storerooms are almost empty, so it’s about time that we get going again”, Joachim Lind, head of the car sales company Saab Ana in Trollhättan, told TT.

Production consists mostly of the Saab 9-3 model, and of a few cars of the 9-5 model.

Last year sales plunged almost 60 percent to 40,000 cars. Production will now start at a rather low pace and the firm is expected to build some 100 cars a day.

The company will gradually step up the rate of production to 50,000 – 60,000 cars a year. Within two year it aims to make 100,000 – 120,000 units a year, which will make the company profitable.

Production had been suspended since the end of January on orders from General Motors (GM), which started to wind-down its loss-making Swedish brand in December after failing to find a suitable buyer.

After months of negotiations and setbacks that left Saab's fate in limbo, Dutch sportscar maker Spyker last month finalised the purchase of the iconic Swedish brand from General Motors.

Saab "will become more entrepreneurial, it will become a company that has to stand on its own legs and that has to determine its own future," Spyker's CEO Victor Muller said at the time.

Muller's immediate goals for the company were "to actually start building cars again, to revamp the energy in the dealer body, to demonstrate to the market that we are for real, there to stay, and coming out with incredible projects."