The Saab Phoenix Concept. Will the name prove prescient for the now-bankrupt Swedish maker?

At the 2011 Geneva Motor Show, Saab unveiled a concept car called the Phoenix, named to symbolize the maker’s seeming rebirth from the ashes.  It was clearly premature, as we now know, the maker soon forced into bankruptcy.

Yet, there may still be life in the old brand, a number of potential investors insisting they are close to pulling off a deal that could, indeed, bring Saab back from the dead.  Among the potential rescuers are a Chinese automaker that failed in its original bid to partner with Saab, as well as a new Swedish electric vehicle company.

But whether Saab can, in fact, be saved is anything but certain even if someone can field a credible offer.  The problem is that some of the insolvent Swedish maker’s assets are controlled by its former parent, General Motors.  And so far, GM has refused to give permission to any of the deals that might have saved Saab.

By various reports there could be as many as a half-dozen different bidders trying to win over the two court-appointed administrators overseeing the Saab liquidation.

That includes National Electric Vehicle Sweden which, despite what its name might sound like is actually a newly-formed holding company that pairs the Japanese investment firm, Sun Investment with National Modern Energy Holdings, of Hong Kong.

“Nobody has really a picture of what kind of resources they have or what their intentions are, besides the fact that they want to produce electric vehicles,” Valdemar Lonnroth, a journalist at TTELA, a newspaper in Saab’s home town in Trollhattan, told Britain’s AutoCar.

The other strong bidder appears to be Zhejiang Lotus Youngman Automobile, a Chinese automaker that originally tried to cut a deal with Victor Muller, he the Dutch entrepreneur who had purchased Saab from GM only to see it collapse little more than a year later.

Youngman tried a variety of approaches to pulling off a deal, initially proposing an equity investment and later offering to buy Saab outright for $492 million.  But that offer – along with several others made by various Chinese firms – was scuttled by GM.

Apparently not wanting to see its designs and powertrains show up in China competing with its own operations the U.S. maker refused to allow the use of its intellectual property.  That apparently included the design of the latest Saab 9-5 and 9-4X, along with some key componentry.

GM continues to insist it won’t reverse course, so what is left?  There’s the Phoenix concept and some other projects Saab was in various stages of undertaking, most notably a next-generation 9-3 model.  There’s also the plant in Trollhattan, generally considered one of Europe’s most modern.  And there’s the brand name – though what that is now worth after all the bad headlines remains to be seen.

Nonetheless, Youngman has reportedly told the Swedish administrators it is now willing to up its ante to $552 million.

For their part, the court representatives would only say it is “an intense period” of the sale process.