AMSTERDAM — Spyker Cars NV, the tiny Dutch company that bought Swedish carmaker Saab from General Motors Co. for $74 million in 2010, said Monday it is suing GM for $3 billion in damages.
Spyker, along with its now-bankrupt former Saab subsidiary, alleges that GM unfairly blocked deals that would have seen a Chinese manufacturer take over Saab production and save it from bankruptcy. It says GM feared competing with Saab in China.
“We owe it to our stakeholders and ourselves that justice is done,” said Spyker CEO Victer Muller. “We tirelessly worked to save Saab Automobile until GM destroyed those efforts and deliberately drove Saab Automobile into bankruptcy.”
He told reporters on a conference call that the suit filed with the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan could drag on for “years.”
GM could not immediately be reached for comment. Business law professor Anthony Sabino of St. John’s University said that at first glance, Spyker’s suit was a long shot.
“GM is in a very strong position: all they need to do to show they were not the cause of Saab’s bankruptcy is say, ‘Look at the recession, look at their sales figures.’ “
But he didn’t rule out that the smaller company could win on some points and GM would eventually agree to some kind of out-of-court settlement.
“It would be way less than $3 billion, and that may be all Spyker is angling for,” he said.
