The Spyker C8 Aileron is the Dutch car company’s latest and, undoubtedly, greatest road car creation.
It emanates from the same fearless men of orange who have systematically entered and then dropped out of F1, bought Saab, got rid of it again and, in the meantime, produced some of the world’s weirdest supercars. Spyker is not, it is fair to surmise, your typical sports car company.
To give you an idea what sort of outfit we’re talking about, Spyker’s motto is ‘Nulla tenaci invia est via’. Translated literally this means, ‘For the tenacious no road is impassable’. Or, to put it another way, anything in life is possible – so long as you’ve got the balls. And the V8-engined Aileron certainly has plenty of cojones.
Yet beneath its strikingly aggressive, aircraft industry influenced styling – complete with jet turbine wheel design and jet engine-inspired air intakes – the Spyker C8 is an extremely serious piece of kit. The engine and six-speed semi-auto gearbox have been lifted straight out of an Audi S4 and then tuned to suit Spyker’s needs, while the mid-engined space frame aluminium chassis has been designed and set up for Spyker by Lotus.
Power is 395bhp and torque 354lb ft, and if you think these numbers seem somewhat underwhelming in return for the Spyker's substantial price tag, you need to understand two key things about the Aileron.