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New owners of Saab don't get to use the name

Saab won't be revived as a Chinese-backed electric car brand. Aerospace and defense company Saab AB has declined to let the new owners of the dormant automaker's old designs and factory use the name on new cars, Automotive News reports. It's a blow to fans of the Swedish brand, who hoped the name would be revived on new vehicles coming out of the same factory as models like the 99 Turbo. National Electric Vehicle Sweden, known as NEVS, bought major assets of the Saab operation in 2012 following former parent Spyker's decision to liquidate the company in December 2011. This not only included the Trollhattan assembly plant in Sweden, but the rights to the Saab 9-3 and the platform of its successor. NEVS built some new 9-3s using leftover parts and powered by the old 2.0-liter turbo engines, with the intent to raise money to produce new electric vehicles for Europe and China – and to use the Saab name. When General Motors bought all of Saab Automobile in 2000, it used the name under license from the Saab AB. That permission was then passed to Spyker in 2010 and later NEVS, albeit without the griffin logo. But when NEVS sought creditor protection in 2014, Saab AB revoked the naming rights. Following reorganization, NEVS in August announced a deal with Dongfeng Motor Corp. to develop a new lineup of electric vehicles, which was revealed in December to include five new models by 2018, some assembled in China by 2020 – the first of which being an EV version of the old 9-3. However, Saab AB told Automotive News that discussions have ended regarding the use of the Saab name on these vehicles. NEVS owner Kai Johan Jiang told a Swedish radio station the company will find a new name to market the cars under when they go on sale. It's similar to what happened to SAIC when it purchased vehicle technology from bankrupt British carmaker MG Rover. While it had the tooling to essentially make the Rover 75, the brand name at the time belonged to BMW and barred SAIC from using it, so the Roewe brand was created in China. It's unclear why talks broke down and also where NEVS will get a new name (there aren't nicer ways to spell Saab, and it was originally an acronym, anyway). Will Saab AB attach its name to another line of cars? Probably not. What it does mean, however, is that Saab fans have to cling tighter to their old cars now. Perhaps that's for the best. Related Video:

Petrolicious keeps our love of the Saab Sonett aflame

German auto designs lean toward function and purpose. Italian designers deliver passion and beauty. The Brits, majesty. American cars, brashness and authority. If you want a funky design, though, you go to Sweden. The land of cheap, do-it-yourself furniture and delicious meatballs knows a thing or six about style and design, and while that character is only now reemerging thanks to a certain string of Volvo concepts, it use to be that Saab was the authority on penning some of the industry's more unique designs.
Take the beautiful Sonett for example - a small coupe whose appearance is a funky mishmash of a Porsche 911 and a Bugeyed Sprite with just a hint of a Citroën DS (it's that convex rear window). It's a positively striking car, made more unique by its two-stroke, three-cylinder powertrain and four-on-the-tree manual transmission. With just 70 horsepower hauling about 1,500 pounds of Swedish style, the Sonett strikes us as an ideal alternative to some of the English sports cars of its day, particularly for those that are looking for something beyond your average MG or Triumph.
For Glenn Roberts, the Sonett was a part of his childhood. His family owned example was originally a special-order item by his parents in 1967. He bought the car from them 13 years later and has never looked back, completing a restoration in 2004. With a story like that, it's not surprising that Roberts and his silver Sonett are the most recent pairing to get some attention from Petrolicious.

Spyker files $3 billion lawsuit against General Motors over Saab's demise

"Smack." That's the sound of Spyker's process server dropping a big ol' pile of legal documents on the doorstep of The Renaissance Center, home of General Motors - or wherever GM's attorneys live during business hours. Contained therein is a Complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and demanding a jury trial, that seeks $3 billion in damages due to "the unlawful actions GM took to avoid competition with Saab Automobile in the Chinese market." Spyker accuses GM of "tortiously interfering" with Saab's business relationship with Chinese automaker Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile (Youngman), actions that Spyker CEO Victor Muller (above) said "deliberately drove Saab Automobile into bankruptcy."
(From Wikipedia: "Tortious interference, also known as intentional interference with contractual relations, in the common law of torts, occurs when a person intentionally damages the plaintiff's contractual or other business relationships.")
The interference in question specifically refers to the very last potential deal, called the Framework Agreement, that Spyker worked out with Youngman. With lots of GM engineering embedded into the 9-4X and 9-5, The General had the right to approve any Saab partnership that would involve the transfer of GM intellectual property. Spyker had been rebuffed over every previous deal with a Chinese firm, including two bids by Youngman, due to GM concerns over its IP getting into Chinese hands and having to face Chinese-market competitors using its technology. The Complaint alleges that the Framework Agreement would have put a firewall around all GM IP - Youngman would only work on Saab's Phoenix platform, said to be just about free of GM tech, and would have no access to 9-3, 9-4X or 9-5 technology until after Saab ceased all ties to GM.