A week after Spyker rescued Saab, NICK HALLputs the firm's Aileron supercar through its paces and asks what the firm can add to the Saab brand
THE SPYKER rescue plan for Saab is akin to Liverpool football club being rescued from its current financial impasse by Home Farm. The differences in scale are phenomenal.
While we all know what Saab has to offer – with little change in the last decade – few of us have come across a Spyker. So just what are their cars like? Are they bringing anything more than borrowed money to the deal? Curiosity got the better of us, so we headed to Arizona to find out.
The new Spyker Aileron belongs in Monaco, Beverley Hills, Dubai or in any of the wealth centres of the world. So invading a trailer park in Scottsdale, Arizona, was about as politically correct as running through the slums of Calcutta flashing your Rolex. And yet even the poorest residents of this ramshackle mobile home community couldn’t resist a bemused smile and a quick enquiry about the power, provenance and price.
That is the power of the new Dutch supercar that magically captures the spirit of fun, decadence and wanton excess and serves it up in a package of glowing, friendly warmth.
Company founder Victor Muller penned the car, wanting to create a timeless beauty: a modern classic car with epic presence and a sense of fun.
The gaping, round front end and blindingly shiny front splitter announce its presence. Then there are the LED lights, the incredible plunging bonnet and the central air intake on the equally shiny trip of aluminium across the front of the roof.
The side profile is equally impressive, with two air intakes, the gurney flap and the turbine-shaped wheels that pull hot air from the brake discs. The jet engine theme runs deep through the car and intakes, vents, pretty much everything that can follows the turbine design ethos and ties in to the company history that is intertwined with aviation.
It’s the back end that provides perhaps the most dramatic view with the engine peaking through the glass panels, Ferrari-style, to the stainless steel rear diffuser and wraparound apron. The exhaust pipes even come engraved with the company logo and motto: “Nulla tenaci invia est via” (“For the tenacious, no road is impassable”).
Spyker started out as a carriage builder in the late 1800s. The first World War brought a merger with an aircraft company, but Spyker filed for bankruptcy in 1925. That was the end of the story for 75 years, until Dutch lawyer, businessman and car nut Victor Muller dusted off the name in 2000.
This is the second model in the line-up and it’s a grown-up GT car with a character all of its own.The dash is coated in tortoiseshell aluminium that catches the light before you are confronted with 1950s science fiction. The wheel is sourced from an Audi R8, but is trimmed with leather and we found just three pieces of bare plastic in the whole interior. Everything else is leather trimmed and aluminium, the tactile toggle switches cost $50 apiece compared to the $1 parts that fill out most boutique supercars.
The Recaro seats are trimmed with trademark quilted leather and the gear linkage is exposed.
It’s a rolling work of art, and it’s here that the Spyker marks itself apart from the undoubtedly faster Italian opposition. Even the key is special, it’s a hockey puck-style milled aluminium disc that weighs heavy in the hand.
With a full aluminium chassis tweaked by the company’s in-house racing team, a 1,425kg kerbweight and the same suspension set-up that has starred this year on the Lotus Evora, the Aileron sounds like a dream sportscar. And it could be. It isn’t, but that’s a conscious decision to turn this big two seater into a 400bhp Grand Tourer.
So comparing the 0-100kph time of 4.5 seconds to the not too dissimilarly priced Lamborghini LP560-4, Ferrari 458 Italia and Audi R8 V10 is more or less pointless, although it’s 300kph top end speed is far from shabby. But pure speed isn’t the point.
The ride is sublime, on the highway the car registers expansion joints with a dull thud, but there isn’t even a tug on the wheel. This is a perfectly composed machine with near perfect poise, and in auto mode it is utterly relaxed and so crazy on the aesthetic front, that you could easily imagine buying one for the cruise factor alone.
On the backroads, it is slightly less convincing. The Lotus-tuned suspension is magical and Spyker has produced a zero understeer car with massive mechanical grip at the rear thanks to 19-inch wheels. And the AP Racing steel brakes do a masterful job.
The company is working on a manual gearbox, which will sharpen the edges and create a sporting masterpiece. Until then the Aileron will come with the automatic six-speed gearbox from the Audi S8 and it’s a little too relaxed for a flat-out assault.
Spyker says their car is an “and” car, not an “or” car, meaning owners generally have a Lamborghini and a Ferrari in the garage already. So when the owner wants to go flat out they should take one of the other cars.
This is an underdog that has willfully gone swimming in a sea infested with conglomerate owned Italian and German sharks and on his second attempt Muller has created a car that is a slug of power and a manual gearbox away from greatness.
For the tenacious, it seems, no road is impassable. It’s that sort of attitude that could help it handle the challenging task of keeping Saab afloat.
Factfile
Engine:4.2-litre V8; 400bhp
0-100km/h:4.5 secs
Top speed:300 km/h
Price:€162,000 plus tax