With Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney - in his first debate with President Barack Obama - affixing the "losers" tag to upstart automakers Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors, a strong response to Romney's remarks has been reported by problems-plagued plug-in hybrid car maker Fisker.

Romney's statement, which was aimed as a jab at President Obama but also garnered a reaction from Fisker, went thus: "You put $90 billion, like 50 years' worth of breaks, into -- into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla and Ener1. --- you pick the losers, all right?"

Romney apparently made the statement against the backdrop of the fact that Fisker - and the other three companies - had received a $529 million low-interest loan from the Department of Energy, for developing its plug-in hybrid car lineup and retooling GM's former Delaware plant to manufacture the vehicles.

However, after Fisker failed to meet the milestones spelled out in the loan deal, the company - which had drawn down only $193 million to begin with - was cut off from the loan scheme.

Nonetheless, Fisker has asserted that it does not consider itself a "loser", as Romney has labeled it, with the company's spokesman Roger Ormisher saying in a Thursday statement to Wired that the automaker has "sold 1,500 cars already, raised over $1.2 billion of private equity and now expanding our export markets to GCC and China"; and adding that the moves were "quite an achievement for a small American business."