Spyker sues GM for $3b over Saab death

The complaint filed in Michigan, US, claims that "the unlawful actions GM took to avoid competition with Saab Automobile in the Chinese market" would legally be considered as tortious interference - intentionally damaging business or contractual relationships.

The main part of the accusation is directed at the disintegration of a deal between Saab’s owner, Spyker, and Chinese carmaker Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile (Youngman).

The deal, called the Framework Agreement, was the last of several that had been successively mounted as Saab slid into crisis from the start of 2010, when it ceased being a wholly-owned GM subsidiary.

GM had refused to approve previous deals on the basis that the Saab 9-4X and 9-5 contained a large amount of its engineering intellectual property which would be transferred to the Chinese owners – in a market considered critical to the US giant’s future growth.

However the Framework Agreement took GM-based Saab models off the table, and would have seen Youngman using only Saab’s Phoenix platform which contained virtually no GM technology.

The lawsuit alleges that despite this, GM publicly insisted the Framework Agreement could not go ahead without its approval, which they refused to give. The Framework Agreement then collapsed – and so did Saab.

Under receivership, the bulk of its assets are being bought by a consortium of Swedish, Chinese and Japanese stakeholders under the name National Electric Vehicle Sweden AB, which says it intends to make electric cars at Saab’s Trollhattan plant.

Spyker’s press statement says the lawsuit has been in preparation since Saab went into bankruptcy in December, and is being bankrolled by a third party investor. And it sounds like they’re in it for the long haul. 

“We owe it to our stakeholders and ourselves that justice is done and we will pursue this lawsuit with the same tenacity and perseverance that we had when we tirelessly worked to save Saab Automobile, until GM destroyed those efforts and deliberately drove Saab Automobile into bankruptcy,” Spyker's CEO Victor R. Muller says in the statement.