Green Automotive Co. submitted an offer to purchase the assets of StarPoint USA Inc., the successor company to Daewoo Motor America Inc., and former importer of nearly 200,000 passenger vehicles into the U.S. from South Korea.
"Our interest in StarPoint USA has not been a secret," said Fred Luke, president of Green Automotive, a Dallas-based importer and distributor of eco-friendly vehicles. "We have been working with the company for over six months now in the testing and qualification of the All-Electric Sport Utility Vehicle in preparation for introduction to the U.S. market during the fourth quarter of this year."
According to Luke, Green Automotive personnel discussed a business combination with StarPoint management earlier in their relationship, but elected to get to "get to know the company" better through a contractual relationship before taking the next step.
"With over 300 retail automotive dealerships covering a large number of the major metropolitan markets, StarPoint also has a vehicle distribution system, consisting of proprietary hardware and software, originally developed at a cost of over $100 million, used to manage and track all transactions relative to the importation and distribution of vehicles including post-sales parts, service, warranty and customer relations management," Luke said. "The addition of StarPoint to the Green Automotive organization has the potential to timely leverage StarPoint's existing dealership infrastructure and nationwide dealership network to enable us to enter the market on time, or perhaps sooner than originally expected, with a very potent pre-existing dealer presence."
Luke went on to say, "This proposed 'marriage' is still in its infancy, and I suspect that it may take a week or so for the StarPoint management to evaluate the value of the proposal, but I feel like the combination of our respective businesses as we've proposed will create a significantly stronger and more valuable company."