SMS Supercars Sues MJ Acquisitions

Yet another twist and turn in the eventful Saleen saga. If you're not familiar Steve Saleen is an automotive tuner and one of the most respected in his field. His company Saleen, Inc has produced many special edition Mustangs as well as dedicated supercars like the Saleen S7.

It's a complicated story but in 2007 Steve Saleen resigned from the company he had piloted for years. There's been a ot of speculation for the reasons surrounding it but we don't know what happened for sure. After this, the company began to have financial issues and began to shut down, offering everything to produce a Saleen Mustang up for auction. The Saleen name of course is still of great value and MJ Acquisitions came in and bought choice parts of the company.

Following this, MJ Acquisitions announced it no longer would be honoring the warranties of any previous Saleen vehicles. But, it would continue to produce new ones. Besides making absolutely no business sense for the company's reputation, it also was potentially damaging to the brand name that Steve Saleen worked to cultivate.

In response to this, Steve Saleen and his new company SMS Supercars said they would honor the warranties of the cars built by the previous company. That is despite the fact he had no legal connection to the new company - just his name on the product. It was a stand up thing to do, and also a brilliant marketing move.

Now MJ Acquisitions is restarting production of Saleen-branded vehicles and SMS Supercars is filing suit. He said the suit is being done to protect his brand name and make it clear that the only Steve Saleen-authorized vehicles are the ones produced by SMS Supercars. We'll see how it all works out - it's going to be interesting.