De Volkskrant put hard numbers on the Meppel Saab story
A May 26, 2026 profile in De Volkskrant brings one of the most concrete post-bankruptcy Saab stories back into focus: Saabpartners.com BV in Meppel, founded in 2012 by Dirk Koppen. The newspaper’s profile box gives the scale clearly enough: 10 employees, around €1.5 million in annual turnover, and a business built around Saab youngtimers, restoration, parts, and lease cars.
The strongest number is not the turnover. It is the engine stock.
After Saab’s 2011 bankruptcy, Koppen managed to buy 587 factory-new Saab engines from the remaining stock in Trollhättan. According to the Volkskrant article, around 1,200 B205 and B235 engines were available. Roughly half went to Great Britain. The remaining 587 were shipped to Meppel.
For a normal garage, that would have been a risky warehouse decision. For a Saab specialist, it became the basis for a business model.
These were not random engines. The B205 and B235 sit at the center of the Saab 9-3 and 9-5 world. They are known, repairable, tunable, and still supported by a deep specialist knowledge base. A company with hundreds of new units could do more than sell tired used cars. It could rebuild cars with a credible mechanical foundation behind them.
Table of Contents
- 1 Koppen’s Saab route started before the lease model
- 2 The engines sold faster than a bankrupt brand was supposed to sell
- 3 Youngtimer leasing turned parts stock into cash flow
- 4 Six lifts full, but not enough mechanics
- 5 The youngtimer tax fight is now the weak point
- 6 Meppel is not nostalgia, It is infrastructure
Koppen’s Saab route started before the lease model
The Volkskrant profile also gives useful background on Koppen’s path into Saab. Before Saabpartners became a professional operation, he sold Italian made-to-measure shoes. A green Saab 96 became part of the shop’s visual identity. It was the same kind of Saab his grandfather had owned.
That car was not bought as a business calculation. It was bought, restored, and probably paid for too generously. But the restoration forced Koppen into the Saab network: parts people, mechanics, model knowledge, and the kind of practical contacts that later became valuable.
At the same time, he drove a Saab 9-5 Aero station wagon with around 260 hp, using it for long trips and transport connected to his shoe business. That detail explains the later direction better than any brand slogan. The 9-5 was not decoration. It was a fast, useful, long-distance tool with a huge cargo area.
By the time Saab collapsed, Koppen was no longer looking at the brand as an outsider. He knew the cars, the owners, and the gaps left behind by the factory.
The engines sold faster than a bankrupt brand was supposed to sell
One of the most telling details in the article is Koppen’s account of the early engine sales. He says the sale moved so fast that, while his son was at swimming lessons, he sold 85 engines in about an hour and a half.
That does not sound like a dead market.
It sounds like a market where owners and specialists knew exactly what those engines meant. A factory-new Saab engine after 2011 was not just a spare part. It was insurance for cars that owners did not want to give up.
Koppen did not stop with engines. The Volkskrant article mentions additional parts stock, including transmissions, limited-slip differentials, and Haldex clutches. Those components matter because many of the most interesting late Saab models depend on precisely that kind of supply: Aero versions, XWD cars, higher-spec 9-3s and 9-5s, and the cars people actually want to preserve rather than simply keep moving cheaply.
That is why the wider Meppel Saab story has never been only about one garage. It is about a concentration of knowledge, parts, and customers in one Dutch town.
Youngtimer leasing turned parts stock into cash flow
The engines explain the workshop side. The Dutch youngtimer lease regime explains the commercial side.
The youngtimer arrangement has made older business cars attractive because the taxable private-use benefit is calculated over the car’s current economic value rather than its original catalog price. In 2026, the Dutch Tax Administration states that the 35% addition over economic value applies to cars older than 16 years, with transitional rules for cars already used in 2025.
For a Saab 9-3 or 9-5, that calculation changes everything. A car that was expensive when new can become fiscally attractive once its market value has fallen. That gave Saabpartners a workable proposition: rebuild Saabs properly, install new or refreshed engines where needed, maintain them in-house, and offer them as business youngtimers.
The Volkskrant article describes how Koppen saw the opportunity after a customer visited with a youngtimer. The fiscal logic was clear enough: a car once priced like an executive model could become very cheap to run as a business vehicle once the bijtelling was calculated over its reduced current value.
From there, the business model was straightforward: prepare Saabs, lease them, maintain them, and keep them in daily service. According to the article, Saabpartners also installed LPG as standard on these lease cars, with Koppen arguing that this made the cars cleaner than simply replacing them with new ones.
That point is debatable in a wider emissions discussion, but it is central to his business logic: reuse an existing car, renew the mechanical core, keep it supported by specialists, and give it a second business life.
Six lifts full, but not enough mechanics
The workshop detail in the Volkskrant article is important. Koppen says he has six lifts, plus another location across the street, and that they are always full. He also says he wishes he had more mechanics.
That sentence says more than a broad paragraph about “Saab passion” would.
There is work. There are cars. There are customers. The bottleneck is not interest in Saab, but skilled labor. That is a familiar problem across the Saab world. Parts matter, but people who know how to diagnose and repair these cars matter just as much.
Meppel’s Saab story is also changing in real time. Saab Specials, long tied to the Timmer name, has announced that it will close on April 30, 2026. That makes Saabpartners.com more important, not less. When a specialist closes, the loss is not only commercial. Model knowledge, customer history, parts familiarity, and workshop routines leave with it. Even in Meppel, Saab infrastructure is not guaranteed.
The youngtimer tax fight is now the weak point
The problem is no longer only technical. It is political.
The Dutch youngtimer regime was changed abruptly in late 2025, with the planned direction moving toward a much stricter age threshold. Official public information still says the age limit may rise to 25 years from 2027, although the final form remains uncertain because the Tweede Kamer wants the plan adjusted.
For Saabpartners, that uncertainty has already caused damage. De Volkskrant reports that Koppen lost about a quarter of his turnover after the political shock around the youngtimer arrangement. Maintenance and repairs are now carrying more of the business, while companies that relied more heavily on youngtimer sales or leasing are under sharper pressure.
This is exactly why the Dutch youngtimer tax warning matters for Saab owners. A good Saab can still be mechanically viable. A new engine can make it stronger. A specialist can maintain it properly. But if the tax calculation changes too sharply, the customer’s reason to lease the car can disappear before the car even reaches the workshop.
The Tweede Kamer has since moved toward softening the impact. A March 2026 motion from Grinwis and Oosterhuis points to unintended consequences for sellers and users of youngtimers and mentions possible alternatives, including freezing the arrangement around model year 2012 combined with a higher bijtelling percentage over economic value.
But until the final legal shape is clear, buyers hesitate. That hesitation is already enough to hurt a business built on prepared cars, parts investment, and workshop planning.
Meppel is not nostalgia, It is infrastructure
The point of the Volkskrant profile is not that Saab owners still love Saab. That is obvious. The useful part is that it shows the mechanics of Saab’s post-bankruptcy life in one place.
There are 587 engines from Trollhättan. There is a company with 10 employees. There are six workshop lifts that Koppen says are always full. There are lease cars, LPG conversions, gearbox parts, Haldex components, and customers who still want a Saab as a serious daily business car.
That is infrastructure, not sentiment.
And it is fragile. A Saab specialist can solve engine, transmission, suspension, and diagnostic problems. It cannot solve tax uncertainty alone. If the Dutch youngtimer regime becomes too restrictive, the damage will not stop with one garage in Meppel. It will affect prepared cars, parts demand, lease customers, workshop planning, and the value of the knowledge built around these cars.
Koppen turned a bankruptcy stock into a business. The question now is whether Dutch tax policy will still leave enough room for that business to keep working.
