You can relax: Spyker F1 is safe
Spyker made 94 cars last year, as well as its first profit, and has nearly 200 pre-orders for its new SSUV. In spite of that, it is apparently in some sort of financial trouble. The Etihad Aldar Spyker F1 team, however, is safe. Managing Director Colin Kolles revealed that "Spyker formula one is financed through its own consortium of investors, partners and suppliers and we are not reliant on input from the road car division." It makes sense -- though privateers are almost gone, a team like Williams still makes it without carmaker support. But this leaves open the possibility that Spyker cars, which are ugly but superlative in their way, will go the way of bellbottoms while the F1 team, a spectacularly average affair up to now, will remain. All you fans of Christijan Albers and Adrian Sutil, rejoice.
[Source: Motor Authority]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
gary 4:17PM (6/03/2007)
do you guys have a hi-rez of that shot?
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HotRodzNKustoms 4:19PM (6/03/2007)
Spyker putting it's name up for a loan is not a necessarily a sign that it is in trouble. They might just be banking on the value of their name so that they can get a large lump of cash to either set up for tooling the new SSUV or to expand production since at 200 orders for that one model it far exceeds Spyker's ability to produce a 100 cars a year. With Spyker's current production at 94 cars last year if that were to keep up that means they could build 6 SSUV's a year. So at that rate it would take Spyker 33 years and 3 months to fill all those orders. Autoblog should ask Spyker before assuming that they are in trouble.
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Nick 5:19PM (6/03/2007)
I never understood how they were in business to begin with. Lamborghini and Ferrari and Bugatti have been absorbed. It's difficult to make exotics profitably, especially ones as ugly as the Spykers are. I guess rich boys need their toys; in this case, the toy is the car company itself.
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Yago bal 5:49PM (6/03/2007)
Reading the whole post, I didn't understand the logic behind your conclusion... "Spyker cars are maiking a profit, and they are independent from the F1 operation: say goodbye to Spyker cars"?
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Bart 6:13PM (6/03/2007)
Spyker cars ugly? The new SSUV is a love/hate thing, but the C8 and C12? They're works of art.
And I'll have to agree with the above poster. They're making a profit, they have increased order sizes. And it is about to go broke?
In the last newspost about Spyker that came up here, it hinted at the same. I already said the doom scenario was out of place. Since then not a single bit of bad news has come from Spyker, in fact, only positive. As an automotive news source, I had expected you to stick more to what you know, rather than what you dont know.
Dutch media -oh hey what a coincidence, that's where Spyker is situated- havent said a bad word about Spyker. Perhaps because they're better informed?
The name mortgaging is for a financial injection for ->growth
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Tagg 5:57AM (6/04/2007)
I was hardly losing sleep over whether Spyker, in any form would go bankrupt. Just for kicks, how many people have EVER actually seen a Spyker on the road?
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Carlos 5:36AM (6/04/2007)
That's too bad. There are other names that belong in F1 a whole lot more.
I mean seriously, Spyker? Their cars are fast, but only because they have to be at that price - they're designed as fashion statements. They have nothing to do with racing and they're so low-volume that they don't need the publicity. They're not as characterless than Midland F1 was but not much better.
Who could possibly be cheering for them on any F1 weekend? All the other teams (except maybe Toro Rosso) have some sort of fanbase...
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