This is a C8 Aileron from Dutch manufacturer Spyker. Now if you know your automotive history, you'll recognize a name Spyker from the early 1900s. They were a coachworks manufacturer, they built some early vehicles and even made planes for World War I. But in the year 2000, Dutch entrepreneur Victor Muller bought the name and brought out a whole new series of vehicles inspired by the Spyker name.
Now this is a latest version, the C8 Aileron. Now this is a two-seat mid-engine coupe powered by an Audi V8 engine, that makes 400 Horsepower and 354 pound-feet of torque. And it has a 6 speed gearbox, and All-Aluminum Space Frame Chassis and a body inspired by airplanes. But what is it really? Is it a track-only race car, an ultra exotic GT or some retro inspired fantasy. Let's hit the road and find out.
Okay, so we're now on the road in the Spyker C8 Aileron, and the first thing you notice is that this car really is something special. As we were driving up and down here, we were trailed by the number of vehicles, just wanted to checkout what is this car? What is it doing? The inside, it's amazing. There's a whole ton of the airplane inspired themes going on here and turned aluminum dash, these old school gauges and a lot of these the switches and knobs, that are straight off older airplanes. Very cool looking, very classic. People who, you know on the same cars, will realize, these look a lot like the mini-switches, but these are much better down the real metal, everything in here has a real hand finished feel to it.
On the road, it's not that it's a harsh ride, it has a dual-control arm suspension, front and rear, and it's Lotus Tuned Suspension, so it is very comfortable to drive, but you do really feel the road through some of these turns. It really has a lot of mechanical grip, and you do get some vibrations transmitted directly into the cabin again because of stiffness.
The engine performs fantastically. Transmission works wonderfully. It's a 6-speed automatic, there is a manual option, but Spyker believes that 90-99% of the customers will order this with the automatic. It's got paddle shifters and the sport mode that helps put all the power to the rear wheels and really gets this thing going.
It's not only the sport mode in the transmission, but there is a sport mode for the exhaust, because a lot of that potential buyers live in gated communities, where they need to have -- they don't want to have such a loud exhaust -- waking up the neighbors, or pissing people off there. So you can actually flip the switch and turn it down, so the valves in the exhaust system don't open below a certain rpm keeps things very quiet. So again on the country roads, it drives great and looks great. But we're not only really pushing it anywhere near it's limit. So again it only cracked just a little bit, and it's way too faster for these roads. So let's see what happens on the track.
Okay, so now we're here on the racetrack at Miller Motorsports Park, we're going to East Course, 2.2 miles in Spyker C8 Aileron. But this is a fantastic sports car out here. It's not a true race car. It's a lot smoother than that, but there are several racing elements to it, particularly in the chassis, you can really feel the out tight and structurally sound this space frame, this little space frame. It really feels very sweet out here through the corners, and that has to deal with also the suspension. The Lotus Tuned really gives this car a lot of mechanical grip and you can feel it from corner to corner, not a lot of slop in the chassis, no flex. This thing just corners like it's on rail. The engine is pretty good too, I wouldn't say it's awesome, it's not really on inspiring. 400 Horsepower and 3100 pounds is a great combination, but there are cars in this range that go quite a bit faster when you hit the pedal.
Transmission is also pretty good. It is a standard torque converter automatic, so it's not as crisp as some of the dual clutch transmissions out there, but it does shift appropriately fast. I will say, the sport mode could stand to have a little more aggressive tune to it. But not bad, again, this is not truly a race car. This is more of a GT car, and you really do get that feel. It's very comfortable. It's very smooth out here, and -- but it does feel quite nicely up here at the racetrack. You can hit it from corner to corner without any fear of spinning the thing out. A lot of grip from the Mid-engine, Rear-wheel drive layout, beautiful car, great sideline, great visibility and fantastic noise from the Audi V8 Engine especially when you get on the throttle, nail it just like that.
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Hi! So we spent a lot of time on the road and at this track with the Spyker C8 Aileron. Now we can answer two questions? Number one, what is it? Is it a Track Tune, race day special, I mean, only for circuits like this? No. This is really a GT car, meant for grand touring and high style. It's a beautiful car. There's a lot of technological goodies, and that aluminum space frame, an awesome engine. And really finely tuned suspension. So the other question we can answer is who is this car for?
Well, it's really for the guy who is interested in having a very unique, and a very special car. It's that limited run vehicles. They are not going to be mass produced, but certainly not really in the realm of Porsche, or even a Lamborghini and a Ferrari, and Spyker knows this. They didn't create this car for that guy. This is not for a guy who has made his million and he is buying his first new car or even a second. This is for the guy who has maybe four or five of those cars, a Bentley, a Lamborghini, a Ferrari, already in his garage.
And maybe he is tired of seeing himself coming and going. He wants something that's very unique, very stylish, get helps performance could to back up, it's racy good looks. It's also for the guy who has a huge ego and the wallet to match, because this car at $224,000 with the automatic, it's certainly not cheap. But if we have the money, we take them.
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