Company type | Privately held company |
---|---|
Industry | Automotive |
Founded | 1983, as Saleen Autosport |
Founder | Steve Saleen |
Headquarters | , United States |
Products | Cars |
Brands | Maxgrip, Powerflash, Racecraft, S4, Speedlab |
Owner | Steve Saleen |
Number of employees | 80 |
Website | www |
Saleen Automotive, Inc., commonly known as Saleen (/səˈliːn/), is an American manufacturer of specialty high-performance sports cars and high-performance automotive parts. Saleen is headquartered in Corona, California, in the United States, and privately held.
Saleen's flagship car was the Saleen S7, introduced in 2000. The S7 was wholly built by Saleen, and features a mid-engine design in a high-performance sports car package. It is also currently the only Saleen production car not based on an existing design or chassis.
Saleen as of 2019 manufactured the S302 (Mustang-based), the Ford F-150-based Saleen Sportruck, and Sportruck XR, a Saleen Tesla GTX and Saleen S1, a new Saleen sports car, and a limited-run successor to the S7 sports car, the S7 LM.[1]
In 2017, Saleen and partner Charlie Wang (Xiaolin Wang, in Chinese) formed a partnership with the city of Rugao to form Jiangsu Saleen Automotive Technology, with Wang as its CEO.[2] The objective of the joint venture was to produce and distribute Saleen vehicles in China for the Chinese market.[3] The company's only mass-produced model, the Maimai, with a maximum speed of 100 km/h (62 mph) and a new European driving cycle range of 305 km, was introduced in 2019, but only 27 had sold as of April 2021.[4] The Chinese government said that Charlie Wang embezzled nearly $1 billion in state funds, and Wang then absconded to the United States. The Nantong Intermediate People's Court put the company up for auction in May 2022.