This former Spyker factory demonstrator has an eye-popping interior and more character than the entire Disney back-catalogue
The Spyker C8 is one of those brilliant anomalies you sometimes get from small-volume sports car-makers. Made to look as though it was carved by aliens from a single block of cool white metal, the Dutch oddball cooks up a recipe of pure desire.
You couldn’t possibly mistake the mid-engined attention-grabber for anything else. This Laviolette, a name given to the models fitted with a fixed glass roof, has the distinctive roof-mounted air intake on top of the C8’s general air of being something designed to go to space in the hands of a man wearing a top hat and tails.
Although the car, soon to be auctioned by RM Sotheby’s in Paris, is actually on the reserved side thanks to Gray Quintessential Silver paint, the crisp shade frames the contrasting interior beautifully. It’s trimmed in quilted Tropicana orange leather and accented by solid metal exposed trim, like a faceted dashboard facia, exposed pedal linkages and a stunning signature exposed manual gear linkage shaft. The C8 is a car you could waste half a day just looking at.
This one is actually a former Spyker factory demonstrator. Used by the company to show its wealthy clients the kind of look that was possible from their retro-mod-minded craftspeople, it has covered a modest 11,000 miles (18,000km) from new. It looks immaculate in all its high-brow detail from the stunningly polished high-exit exhaust tips to the 19-inch wheels.
Mounted behind the two seats is a 4.2-litre V8 sourced from Audi; the same one that was called one of the greatest engines ever made during its time in the B7 RS 4. Slightly detuned from Audi’s 414bhp to 395bhp here, it nonetheless sounds incredible and shuffles the C8 along pretty nicely thanks to an extensive weight-saving build programme. It may look solid on a planetary scale, but depending on trim it actually weighed as little as 1250kg and was good for 186mph.
As well as Spyker itself, the car has had a German owner and the current seller, based in Switzerland. Each custodian has looked after it impeccably according to the neatly-bound service records, and there’s not one single reason we wouldn’t pay the estimated €200,000-€250,000 estimate if we had that kind of cash sitting around. Art and mechanics mesh in the C8 like in few other 21st century vehicles. We want it.