Saab is officially bankrupt, Parent company Swedish Automobile announced right now. The firm has been in difficulty given that April, when it ran out of money, couldn’t pay its suppliers and had to quit creating vehicles. Nonetheless, after eight months of negotiations it looked as if Saab was going to be saved after a sale was agreed with Chinese manufacturer Youngman and distributor Pang Da. Sadly that quite deal fell through, triggering the bankruptcy.  The deal was mainly referred to as off due to General Motor’s refusal to have their patterns and technological innovation used by the Chinese. General Motors spokesman Jim Cain told Automotive News that Saab had not been ready to reassure GM that its technologies would be secure in the sale to the Chinese.

A brief explanation: General Motors when owned Saab, but put it up for sale in 2009 when GM itself was in monetary trouble. By that time Saab had developed the new 9-5 and 9-4X using largely GM components in their underbodies, suspensions, powertrains, and electronics. Then In early 2010, Saab was purchased from GM by Victor Muller’s investment firm, which also owned small supercar maker Spyker. However, when Muller agreed on the sale to the Chinese, GM then made a decision it wouldn’t let its models go to China. GM feel that copyright protection is as well weak in China and its technologies would be pirated. This poses a massive threat to GM as they manufacturer other cars using the same methods – the Insignia, Astra, new Zafira and their US and Chinese equivalents.

With bankruptcy, Muller has said he will not get any money out of Saab. Creditors will scrap above the remaining value left from the company’s tools, equipment and premises and they will not get a lot nor will its employees.

Read the official Statement beneath:

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It might have been a even though because we last showed you a “Manufactured in China” doppelganger, but rest assured, the economic giant from Asia, by no means sleeps.

As if it weren’t troublesome enough that China reaps all the benefits of free of charge trade to sell its goods all over the place while enforcing all variety of rules when it comes to imports (did you know, for example, that only 20 foreign films are allowed for release in China each and every year?) or opening a local organization, the country has also established notoriously lax patent and copyright laws.

Whilst not in substantially large numbers, several Chinese businesses have targeted the automotive sector creating various knock offs of European and Japanese vehicles. Longtime Carscoop reader John F.T. from Norway* discovered yet yet another copy while browsing on a neighborhood on the web marketplace.

This time the victim is the Toyota iQ, which will be sold from this fall as the 2012 Scion iQ in North America. Here’s what John informed us:

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_{2009 BYD F3DM – Click above for high-res image gallery}

Are Chinese cars nothing more than cheap copies of more successful automakers’ products from other parts of the world? That’s a question that has been asked rather widely for the last several years as the numbers of large Chinese automakers has risen dramatically – even more so as they have shown their wares at major auto shows outside their home country.

There is certainly no doubt that many, if not most, cars rolling out of factories in China bear a striking exterior resemblance to popular models from Japan, Europe and the United States. But do those exterior facsimiles go more than skin deep, and if so, does it matter? What about the actual guts of the vehicles – are Chinese automakers creating their own important new technologies, especially in the burgeoning eco-friendly segment?

These are the questions bandied about in a special report from Reuters, targeted specifically in the direction of BYD, the Chinese automaker that has been buoyed by major investments and backed by Warren Buffett. The big draw for Buffett and his money was BYD’s proprietary battery technology, which it uses on its own plug-in vehicles, some of which are supposedly coming to America.

Reuters, citing documents it received by a third party from WikiLeaks, is charging that BYD’s battery tech may not be all its cracked up to be, and that sales of its EVs are painfully slow. Further, officials such as Guanzhou Consul-General Brian Goldbeck reportedly said two years ago that BYD’s vehicles may pass China’s lax copyright laws, but aren’t likely to do so in other countries.

Just as damningly, unnamed consultants claim BYD’s vehicles are very unlikely to pass U.S. safety standards, saying of one of BYD’s models, “If you shut the doors too hard, they fall off.” Removable doors? Not good. Some automakers polled by Reuters claim that BYD requests just enough parts from reputable suppliers to reverse engineer the designs and then assembles them itself using inferior materials.

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Stuttgart is unpleasantly cold in the middle of winter. It’s the crack of dawn, the sky is clear and the ambient temperature hovers at about 15 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m standing in the middle of a large, ice-laden concrete parking lot next to a bright green Mercedes-Benz B-Class sedan. The location is the automaker’s plant in Stuttgart-Möhringen, Germany. Thankfully, I’m not the only person out here.

Local media, documentary crews, dignitaries (including Daimler AG board member Dr. Thomas Weber) and a long list of support personnel are also shivering alongside me. In a scaled-down version of NASA activity minutes before a shuttle launch, engineers and staff are triple-checking each of the three small hydrogen-powered vehicles as we prepare to start our globe-circling journey on the Mercedes-Benz F-Cell World Drive.

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As previously reported, Renault recently suspended three senior managers on suspicion of industrial espionage, related to the manufacturer’s upcoming electric cars. Naturally, the situation begs an obvious question: whom were they spying for?

On Friday, French legislator Bernard Carayon dropped the bombshell, by saying that “proven, diverse and reliable” sources suspect Chinese involvement in the matter.

“There are in effect several sources that are typically thought to be serious who consider that a Chinese buyer is in fact behind this operation”, said Carayon, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative party, on France-Info radio.

The Sarkozy administration declined to comment on Mr. Carayon’s statement and, according to an inside source, the country’s counter-terrorism agency, DCRI, has not yet been involved in the matter.

Meanwhile, Renault didn’t release too many details about the affair, simply stating that it plans to take legal action against the three former company officials, whose identities will be preserved in accordance to the labor laws.

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