General Motors and Ford Motor have approached the Swedish government about aid for their Saab and Volvo car units, the Financial Times said on Monday.
The newspaper said GM, owner of Saab, and Ford, which owns Volvo, wanted Sweden to bolster the units' finances in anticipation of selling the subsidiaries.
The heads of both companies had spoken to Swedish industry minister Maud Olofsson about securing funds, the FT said, citing people familiar with the discussions.
Last week Olofsson said Sweden wanted clarity about what the U.S. parent firms planned before considering any support.
Both Saab and Volvo have suffered sharp sales declines in recent months as the global financial crisis has weighed on prospective car buyers across the world.
Separately, the head of Ford's German operations Bernhard Mattes said the carmaker has no intention of asking the German government for the kind of state aid that GM's Opel unit has requested.
"Ford has not sought German government assistance because sufficient financing is available within the group," Mattes told Die Welt in an interview printed on Monday.
"Our group has $30 billion in liquidity with which we can implement our plan for restructuring, capacity adjustments and development of new models."
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Opel last month became the first European carmaker to seek a government bailout, asking Berlin to guarantee 1 billion euros of loans for 2009.
Mattes said he expected production volumes in the European car market excluding Russia and Turkey to drop to 15 million units in 2008 from 16 million this year. The German market would at best match this year's level of no more than 3.1 million units, he added.
