Spyker prepares for the U.S. launch of exotic car line

Spyker prepares for the U.S. launch of exotic car line

LOS ANGELES — In a city known for glitz, the sight of Ferraris and Lamborghinis roaring down the boulevards may still draw stares but hardly any sense of surprise.

But a Spyker? Now that's something different.

Spyker is a brand of Dutch sports car that is starting to appear across the USA. The brand has 16 dealers in the U.S. and has gradually been expanding its models, with a new larger sports car and a crossover on the way.

If you've even heard of the company, it probably wasn't for its superexotic, superexpensive cars. Spyker is the tiny carmaker that acquired Sweden's Saab from General Motors. While Spyker hasn't detailed its plans for the much-larger brand, the deal at least puts the company visibly on the map.

Till now, it's been a mighty small dot: Spyker has made about 260 cars since 2000.

"Your car nuts know about Spyker. That's pretty much it," acknowledges Beau Boeckmann, vice president of Galpin Motors in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, which recently became a Spyker dealer.

Boeckmann, former host of MTV's now-defunct Pimp My Ride show, says he thinks the Spyker brand will succeed by its very rarity.

A Spyker car is "something (where) you can pull up and everyone gawks," he says. "Ferraris are normal now."

No question about it, Spykers are different, especially in the details. The design goal was to give drivers the experience of sitting in the cockpit of a vintage airplane.

The cars have exposed linkage for the manual shifter. The top of the windshield on the two-seat convertible is just glass, without the customary chrome strip running across the top. Ignition switches are tucked beneath a red flip-up safety tab.

"This is überbling," says Carsten Preisz, vice president of Spyker of North America. "When the economy comes around, (sales) really could take off."

The company takes its name from a Dutch company that built airplanes and cars before going out of business in 1925. The new Spyker came to be in 2000, when it introduced a roadster, the C8 Spyder, at the Birmingham, England, auto show. In the U.S., it is also selling the Spyker C8 Laviolette, a coupe.

Both are powered by an Audi 4.2-liter, 400-horsepower V-8. The cars are made of aluminum — the roadster weighs just 2,750 pounds — and can do zero to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds.

That performance and bling come at a price: The drop-top lists for $219,000, the coupe for $209,000.

Industry watchers have been impressed. "They have done something successfully which no other small-volume maker has done: stay in business," says Robert Ross, automotive editor for the Robb Report, a magazine for the superaffluent.

Spyker next plans a sports car aimed more at the U.S. market, the C8 Aileron, and a crossover, the D8 Peking-to-Paris. The Aileron — named for one of the control surfaces on a plane — will be the first Spyker with an automatic transmission and will be 17 inches longer than the current coupe, to accommodate big Americans.

The crossover's touches include speedometers and tachometers for the front-seat and rear-seat passengers as well as the driver. Can all these quirky features work?

"There's always a customer at the very highest end of the market looking for something unique, and Spykers, with their aero-influenced design and Dutch heritage, provide that in spades," says Eddie Alterman, editor-in-chief of Car and Driver magazine.

Source: [USAToday.com]