14 Dec 06
Spyker
Spyker's badge depicts an aeroplane propeller: no prizes, then, for guessing that the Dutch firm has a heritage in plane-making. Coach-builders Jacobus and Hendrik-Jan Spijker built their first Benz-engined car in 1898, the same year they also made a horse-drawn coronation coach for the Dutch royal family. They named their new company Spyker (easier for foreigners to say and spell) and introduced the four-wheel-drive, six-cylinder 60/80hp in 1903. The subsequent 14/18hp Tourer finished second in the 1907 Peking-Paris rally, and Spykers were exported around the Dutch colonies and to the UK.
The luxury car market declined in the run-up to World War I, and Spyker thus merged with the Dutch Aircraft Factory in 1914. It built around 100 aircraft and 200 aircraft engines during the war at its factory in Trompenburg; at first, it made versions of the Farman HF22 and Nieuport XI under licence, but the Dutch government wanted the country to be less dependent on foreign imports. Spyker was commissioned to design its own plane; a prototype V1 biplane (designed by a French engineer and using a 80bhp Thulin engine) was made, which developed into the 130bhp Clerget-engined V2, of which 78 were built. A few subsequent V3s were made, but the end of World War I and the clear superiority of the Fokker planes saw an end to Spyker aircraft production in 1919, and the V4 was never built.
This aeronautical experience fed into Spyker's car engineering, though: the 1919 Aerococque incorporated a fuselage-type body with aerodynamic fintail. Similar principles fed into the Maybach-engined C4, which set new endurance records and won events including the Mont de la Turbie hillclimb near Monte Carlo in 1922, as well as setting speed records at Brooklands. By now, however, Spyker was running into financial difficulties; it defaulted on an order of 1,000 engines from Maybach - which led to Maybach deciding to make its own cars to put these surplus units in - and it was declared bankrupt in 1925.
The rights to the defunct brand name were bought at the turn of the millennium, and the Spyker badge first appeared on the C8 Spyder, a roadster created by Dutch engineer Maarten de Bruijn. This car was unveiled at the Birmingham Motor Show in October 2000, and since then the reborn Spyker range has expanded to include the C8 Laviolette coupe, the C8 Double 12R racer which has competed at Le Mans, its roadgoing counterpart the C8 Double 12 S, the Audi W12-engined C12 LaTurbie and other variants. Spyker's D12 Peking-Paris SSUV (super sports-utility vehicle, in the vein of the Lamborghini LM-series) goes into production in late 2007. No word yet on a return to aeroplane manufacturing, but with strong financial backing from investors including the government of Abu Dhabi, we wouldn't rule it out.
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