Fisker, Aston Martin Trade Threats, Lawsuit Over New Force 1

Ronnie Schreiber
by Ronnie Schreiber

Car designer Henrik Fisker is planning on launching a new vehicle, called the Force 1, next week at the 2016 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, in conjunction with Bob Lutz’s VL Automotive.

To make sure that the debut comes off without a hitch, according to the Detroit News, Fisker is suing Aston Martin in U.S. Federal Court for $100 million, alleging civil extortion.

Fisker used to be in charge of design for Aston Martin. The British automaker had claimed earlier that Fisker’s new design was cribbed from one of its own.

The lawsuit is in response to a letter, characterized as “threatening” by Fisker’s lawyers, sent to Fisker last month by Aston Martin’s American lawyers. It claimed that a top-view sketch released as a teaser for the Force 1 appears “strikingly similar to several of Aston Martin’s cars, including the DB10 car.” The DB10 was an Aston Martin concept featured in the most recent James Bond movie, “Spectre,” and is said by Aston Martin to portend the look of their cars going forward.

This all seems a bit silly if you think about the fact that neither car exists as a car you can buy. Yes, Aston Martin did build ten DB10s, essentially putting custom bodies on the V8 Vantage’s aluminum VH platform architecture, but they did so for a fictional movie.

The letter asked Fisker to either change the design or not debut the car at the show in Detroit. Though Aston Martin’s attorneys acknowledge in the letter that they don’t know what the final design of the Force 1 will look like, they stressed that the automaker “will not hesitate to protect its valuable rights if necessary.”

For his part, Fisker’s lawyer gave the reason for the suit in a statement: “We believe that in an effort to protect itself from further market erosion, Aston Martin and their three executives who run the company, conspired and devised a scheme to stomp out Henrik Fisker’s competitive presence in the luxury sports car industry.”

Included in the filing are sketches showing differences between the two cars. I’m sure that our in-house design expert Sajeev Mehta can appreciate them, but the drawings remind me a little of George Harrison on the witness stand explaining how “My Sweet Lord” was not plagiarized from “He’s So Fine” (or John Fogerty explaining, when sued by his old record label, how “The Old Man Down The Road” didn’t rip off his own “Run Through The Jungle” that he recorded with Creedence Clearwater Revival).

The Force 1 is scheduled to be revealed at VL’s NAIAS press conference on Jan. 12th.

A spokesman for Aston Martin declined comment. A 2015 lawsuit filed against Fisker by Aston Martin over a Fisker design he called Thunderbolt was dismissed without prejudice, which means it could be filed again.

TTAC will be well present at the the show and we’ll report back on whether or not the Force 1 was on hand — with photos of either the car or an empty space.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

Ronnie Schreiber
Ronnie Schreiber

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, the original 3D car site.

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  • Corey Lewis Corey Lewis on Jan 05, 2016

    These British brands just love to think everyone's copying them. First it was Bentley yelling at Lincoln, now it's Aston yelling at Fisker. The difference here is that the Lincoln will be a real car, but the Fisker will not. Aston, let it go - you're reaching here.

    • See 3 previous
    • Corey Lewis Corey Lewis on Jan 05, 2016

      @callmeishmael I think the Opel Omega was the Continental Euro version with LHD. Not sure if it was available in the same sports tuning though.

  • Ol Shel Ol Shel on Jan 05, 2016

    Back at car design school, one wise instructor noted that every designer has one single design she/he is forever trying to realize. It's pretty obvious that Fisker keeps producing his one best idea. But, I do like his scissors...

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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