DETROIT - Dutch sports car maker Spyker is working around the clock to clinch a deal to buy Sweden's Saab and has a deadline of days not weeks as parent General Motors GM.UL starts winding down the business, Spyker's CEO said on Tuesday.

GM said earlier on Tuesday that none of the bids it received had met the financial requirements for a deal, and appointed wind-down supervisors to take immediate control of the ailing firm, but Spyker's Victor Muller said he had not given up.

SHOWING GM THE MONEY

Muller declined to give any financial details on its bid for Saab, but said the Netherlands-based company had improved an earlier offer.

We have shown Mr Whitacre the money, he told delegates at the Automotive News World Congress taking place in Detroit, where industry executives have gathered this week for the annual auto show.

Muller said Spyker, whose high-end sporty cars sell for between $200,000 and $250,000, had definitely improved its bid for Saab.

For the time being our bid is on the table and we'll have to see how that is responded to.

DAYS, NOT WEEKS

Muller said Spyker wanted to clinch a deal as soon as practically possible as the wind-down process had already started. Effectively nothing has been done in Trolhattan to shut operations down. On the contrary, they're manufacturing cars there, Muller added.

Our deadline is days not weeks, Muller said. If this wind-down would continue we would see effects on the Saab brand, and that would be very unattractive.

Muller said the Swedish government had been very supportive, declining to give further details.

If we would acquire the company we would be hiring rather than firing, Muller said, as production capacity would need to increase rapidly.

Muller said he hoped to reach a deal this week, but could not say for sure whether this would happen. Clearly there is a tremendous time pressure to come to a transaction.

What we would take as a signal to give up is ... if GM would refuse to take our offer, and pursue relentlessly to wind the company down, there is a point in time that you have to say 'this is no longer for us.'

Muller said Spyker wanted Saab for a number of reasons: buying the auto brand would allow it to keep R&D spending -- which is currently spent externally -- in-house, and it would benefit from the arrival of Saab's engineers. Around 10 percent of Saab's 1,100 dealers worldwide could be eligible to sell Spyker cars, tripling its sales infrastructure ahead of the arrival of new models.

We're not interested just to buy into an iconic brand. We're interested because as a business it should be viable.

GM has been trying to sell chronically unprofitable Saab for months. It reached a deal to sell the carmaker to Swedish sports car maker Koenigsegg in August, and China's BAIC agreed to take a stake in Koenigsegg as part of the deal. But in November, Koenigsegg said it was pulling out of talks. BAIC later bought some technology from Saab, including the intellectual property for the 9-5 and 9-3 sedans.

General motors