From the archives: the Spyker Aileron in the USA

This article was first published in Issue 204 of Top Gear magazine (2010)

Google maps duly scoured, we find a road that runs out of Phoenix, up through some faintly mountainous mesas and twisty bits of asphalt and then just... runs out. It says that the ‘Apache Trail’ on Route 88 is a single-track dirt road of ambiguous quality that runs over essentially a mini Grand Canyon, linking various picturesque boating lakes and hiking spots throughout the Usery Mountain Regional Park.

“I would like to drive your near-priceless supercar up that dirt road and try to drive it down a cliff face.” I announce, expecting an immediate and furious rebuttal. “Um. ok,” say the Spyker representatives, without batting an eyelid.

Somewhat disconcerted by this acceptance of what might well be a car-killing experience, I press home the point: “The trail has a tendency to become washed out during rainstorms (it has started to rain at this point). There are drops of several hundred feet protected by nothing more than fag packets and pieces of string. There will be ruts and stones and scorpions and rattle-snakes and I have jet-lag and I’m only going to wear one contact lens.” Even to me, this sounds slightly desperate. “Yup. ok,” say the people from Spyker with the kind of nonchalance that means they have never actually seen me drive a supercar.

Supreme confidence, then. “Ok. Just so’s you know. I’ll probably end up in a strip club. Don’t worry though, I know what I’m doing,” I flip up the deliciously exotic beetle-wing door and slip into what must be one of the most show- stopping interiors anywhere in the car world, then settle back, gently startled by the banks of stainless toggles, the massive horizontal bar of exposed gearchange, the air of specialness. “Just one thing,” I say, leaning out of the car. “How do you start it?”

It turns out there’s a little bit of theatre even in firing up a Spyker. Lift the red toggle catch on the top of the dash and flip the switch underneath to arm the ignition, and the ‘engine start’ button directly underneath will begin to glow. Hit said button and the Aileron will fire up on the first rotation into a stable but whirry idle that speaks of belts and ancillaries doing stout work just behind your right shoulder. Not the most enticing of aural handshakes, it has to be said.

The exposed gearchange – an eminent feature on manual Spykers – now selects the gears on a six-speed ZF automatic in the Aileron, but it still engages with the kind of mechanical clunk that makes you think of heavy-duty somethings. We peel away, cruising through downtown Scottsdale like a sleek orange barracuda in a current populated exclusively by yank SUV whales.

And so to a bit of background: the Aileron is Dutch company Spyker’s second generation of the C8 range, currently populated by a pair of other cars; the C8 Laviolette and the C8 Spyder. The Laviolette is the more focused sports car (manual, hard, noisy), the Spyder the chop-top version with a razored roof and windscreen – both feature Spyker’s predilection for air inlets that resemble the business end of a hypodermic syringe. The Aileron has a more mature outlook, with inlets that resemble jet engine intakes, a longer wheelbase, bigger cabin and that auto.

The auto is important. Spyker customers have apparently been crying out for a self-shifter since the Laviolette first hit the streets – there are stories of customers having their cars transported to areas just around the corner from their favourite restaurants and shuffling them to the frontages in first gear. They loved the car, but couldn’t cope with a clutch.

So the £194k Aileron is a response to a market need: all the drama of the first-gen cars, with a little more day-to-day usability. It works. The Aileron certainly hasn’t lost any of its kerbside wow factor – the American contingent making indecipherable mewing noises wherever we stop. Driving it slowly is easy, the Audi-sourced 4.2-litre V8 in the back chuntering along without complaint, the auto plopping between changes without fuss. But the highways of America aren’t really a very keen strop on which to hone my knowledge of how the Aileron actually handles, so we head off into the Lost Dutchman Park (I’m not making that up), at the bottom of Usery Park, to find some curlier roads.

After a mooch about, doing nothing more taxing than 90° lefts and rights, followed by massively frustrating 60mph highway crawls, we enter the National Park and the roads start to whiplash through the mesas, rising and falling between bits of scenery plucked wholesale from a spaghetti western. Huge, 10-metre-tall sugaro cacti fight for space with the little spiky fists of smaller species, all clinging resolutely to the sandy red backdrop. The road surface is smooth, the corners regular and wide – though it’s wise to remember that Americans drive very slowly and don’t really understand Italian-style overtaking.

The Aileron feels good. The car has an all-aluminium spaceframe – made for Spyker by CPP in Coventry, of all places – and weighs in at about 1,425kg, which is respectable rather than flyweight. The steering is precise and meatily direct, feeding the nose of the car into the corner without feeling like it’s being forced. There’s lots of natural grip (there is no traction control), with a nicely compliant balance between understeer, neutrality and eventual easy oversteer. In fact, there’s something quite familiar about the way the Aileron goes about attacking a corner. Which makes sense when you delve further into the engineering; the suspension is designed and supplied by Lotus. The Aileron is essentially a big fat Evora. Sort of. If you squint and don’t look too closely at the rest of the technical specifications.

It’s fun to punt along, even at modest speeds. And when the rain really starts to fall, the Aileron feels communicative and easy to handle. It might not have traction control, but when the tail swings wide, it does so with the kind of easy grace that comes from a much longer wheelbase. It’ll look after you as far as possible, which fits with the more genteel ethos of the Aileron itself, and the faster you go, the more impressed you get.

But some elements of the Aileron leave you wanting more. though this is a pre-prod car, it’s hard to ignore the fact that not enough has been made of the exhaust note (a more aurally pleasing version is due for the production specification) and that the brakes are way too grabby at low speeds. A simple pad change and servo tweak should see customers stop more gracefully outside Nobu. Of more concern is the fact that the ZF auto, though great at schlepping around town and cruising, isn’t really matched to the ability of the chassis.

The issue is simple: while the suspension is busy lapping up direction changes and big bumps, the auto, even in paddleshift mode, is tardy. In a world where you can have a proper slushy torque-converted auto that shifts almost as quickly as a nominal F1-style robotised manual (we’re talking Audi RS6 here), the Aileron feels like it’s been stuck with last year’s software.

Even if you lock out the auto-shift and switch everything to ‘sports’, downchanges from the paddles are too long in coming and upchanges slurry and cluttered. Add to that the fact that the slushbox seems to rob the motor of some of its 400bhp and 354lb ft, and the Aileron ends up being a fast car that feels brisk rather than outright quick. A 0-62mph time of 4.5 seconds and 186mph top end are not to be sniffed at, but with a seriously modern gearbox, this car could be right up there.

You know what though? I don’t care. Sitting in the Aileron, with its ridiculously low header rail – it feels like you’re looking through a widescreen cinema screen, or sat in the back of the Stig’s helmet looking through his visor – you forget all that competitiveness. You sit and stare at the interior and play with the banks of aerospace-grade toggle switches and fall in love with the drama. A switch in a Ford Focus costs pence. In a Spyker they cost £30. Each. That thing that looks like a counterweight for the gearstick? It’s the control system for the satnav and radio, hewn from billet. And every time you touch it, you smile.

Eventually we arrive at the Apache Trail and there are a few nervous glances as I happily bound down the dirt road kicking up fist-sized clods of earth as I pass. The road is rutted, pitted, chewed through by corrugations that have our support car wobbling about like a drunken heifer. The Aileron rides way better than it should, sucking up the corrugations and barely touching down its stainless front splitter. There are a couple of ominous scrapes, but nothing sickening.

Of perhaps more concern is forgetting for a little while that the road we’re on has an 800ft drop to one side and the little playful spurts of sideways action will end with more than T-Cut can possibly rescue if I get it wrong. At one point we see the remains of a truck that hasn’t made the corner. There isn’t much left.

We stop at a local eatery in Tortilla Flat, whose matron feeds us burgers and sasparilla while the inevitable crowd is drawn to the car outside. You can hear the commentary even before you pop a door and hear the explosive ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ as the crowd glimpses the jewelled cave that is the Aileron’s interior. Weirdly, this car doesn’t trade on a name; not one person knows what it is, in fact some of the questions are ridiculous: “Is it the new Corvette/Boogatti/Ferrari?” “Is it electric?” “Is it based on the ZR-1?” – this from a man looking at the Audi engine in the back. The best though, comes from an old couple: “Is it American?” “No madam, it’s Dutch.” “But where is it made? Illinois?” “Er, no madam it’s Dutch, made in Holland.” “It’s made in New York, honey...”

Eventually the sun drops and we trawl back up the Apache Trail. As a final flourish, I insist we stop at a strip joint, simply because I’m determined to deflect the Spyker people’s imperturbable calm. And it’s here under the mournful neon that the Aileron suddenly spits itself into clarity.

The Aileron doesn’t need the kind of qualifiers that we usually associate with supercars. It’s one of a rare breed of top-end motors that isn’t trying to be the fastest/rawest/most accelerative vehicle on the planet. Spyker assumes that its buyers already have a Scuderia, or a Veyron in the garage. The Aileron is a little slice of pageantry, of drama, of excitement in the shape of a car. An exotic alloy of good looks and unshakeably good vibes. It looks jaw-dropping from the outside and mind-blowing from the inside. The fact that it does a perfectly respectable job of being quick is almost a side issue.

You either get the Aileron, or you don’t. It’s showy and a bit cartoony and slightly mental. But it’s also brilliant, and incredible, and life-affirming. And I know what would mean more to me in the long run. Hooray for the Spyker Aileron. It’s a very TopGear kind of car.