Spyker & Youngman D8 SUV & Phoenix Joint Venture

Spyker and China’s Youngman are launching joint ventures to build the Spyker D8 SUV and develop the Saab Phoenix platform.

Did you really think Victor Muller would come out of Saab with nothing? Especially after he told is in April he was looking for investors to push the Spyker D8 SSUV in to production?

Muller’s Spyker and China’s Youngman – putative seller and buyer of Saab – are teaming up with a pair of joint ventures that will see Spyker’s long awaited Super SUV – the once D12 SUV and now D8 – coming to market, and Saab’s Phoenix Platform exploited.

Youngman are investing €10 million in to Spyker for a 29.9 per cent holding (€6.7 million for shares and €3.3 million as a shareholder loan) with the first chunk of share money – €2.3 million – being paid with 7 days and the rest within 45 days.

Spyker and Youngman are also forming a joint venture to develop Spyker’s SSUV D8 – which they’ve called Spyker P2P B.V. – with Youngman putting in €25 million for a 75 per cent stake and Spyker sticking in what they’ve already developed for the D8 Peking Paris.

A second JV will see Spyker Phoenix B.V born to develop a new range of premium car models based on the Saab Phoenix Platform, the rights to which were acquired by Youngman in 2011 in the midst of its bid to take control of Saab. Youngman will own 80 per cent of Spyker Phoenix and Spyker 20 per cent.

Victor Muller was suitably pleased with his latest bit of ducking and diving. he said:

Since the regretful demise of Saab Automobile AB in December 2011,we have been investigating the possibilities to continue our intended cooperation with Youngman to the benefit of both companies thereby utilizing the assets, both tangible as well as intangible, each of us has at its disposal.

With this Framework Agreement, Youngman and Spyker lay the foundation for an intense cooperation whereby we will pursue the objectives we each had in mind when we were forging our cooperation as partners in Saab Automobile AB. We clearly share the vision on how to shape Spyker’s future as partners going forward.

It’ll be interesting to see where the partnership between Spyker and Youngman goes, with the promise of the Spyker D8 SUV finally going forward again and the apparently impressive Phoenix platform yielding real cars.