At the beginning of the last century the Brits recognized two kinds of Rolls-Royce cars: their own island-made and the continental models. Automobiles made by the Dutch company Spyker merited the proud name "Continental Rolls-Royce".
On the night of February 21st, 1907 the situation aboard the S.S. Berlin sailing from England to Holland was alarming. The crew was losing the unequal battle with the elements. As often happens under such circumstances, Hendrik Spijker was mentally reviewing his whole life: after all, it was the time of "existence philosophy" emergence.
Thinking about his business, first of all Hendrik remembered how he and his brother Jacob were making the Golden Carriage. At the end of the 19th century the Spijker brothers earned themselves a reputation as excellent coach builders, so they've got an order to make a carriage for the Dutch queen Wilhelmina. At the dawn of the horseless era, the royal carriage was one of the most technically advanced in Europe. It wasn't the most advanced only because the brothers decided to make it not just beautiful but as durable as possible. And they succeeded wonderfully well: the 110-year-old coach is still in use, and the current Dutch queen occasionally rides in it along the streets of Amsterdam.
The carriage for the Royal court was the brightest gem in the coach-building brothers' portfolio and one of the very last ones. By the end of the 19th century the demand for this kind of transport was falling in the Netherlands as well as all over the world. So the Spijkers decided to diversify their business. They've bought a batch of Benz engines in Germany and started installing them in their coaches, which looked very much like carriages.
Spijker motor coaches immediately became extremely popular among the Dutch. The brothers quickly dropped their former business and switched to building automobiles. The main stake was put on making the reliable and durable cars, and soon people started calling the luxurious Spijker automobiles "Continental Rolls-Royces". A lot of foreign customers got interested too, so the Dutch brothers decided to change the company name. Now it was called Spyker: changing the two middle letters made life much easier for foreign dealers.
While the crew of Hendrik Spijker's ship was desperately fighting the storm, the constructor might have remembered his famous Spyker 60 HP model to stop thinking about the worst. In just five years in the automobile business, the Spijkers achieved the highest technological level leaving the competitors far behind. In all fairness, the Spyker 60 HP presented in 1903 was revolutionary. For the first time the Spijkers made a car with a 6-cylinder engine, four-wheel drive and four-wheel brakes. Note that each of these solutions was used for the very first time ever! And when the innovative design proved to be extremely reliable too, the demand for the expensive model grew quickly. Since then, Spyker cars became active participants in various automobile races.
A momentous event was the second place in the famous Peking-Paris race, where the participants had to cover 16,000 kilometres! The brothers' car proved to be tough and reliable, though Hendrik couldn't get back to that event without a shadow of regret. Firstly, he was very much hoping for the first place which took the crew of the Italian car Itala. And secondly, that race almost ruined the company. The company gave a very expensive car to the enthusiastic French driver willing to compete in the rally for free, and now the Spijkers lacked the running capital for developing their business. Maybe it worried Hendrik most of all in his last hours. The S.S. Berlin sank not far from its destination place taking down 142 passengers. The death of the boss and the financial problems eventually led the company to bankruptcy. A group of investors bought it for a very modest amount, and there wasn't a place for Jacob Spijker in the new team.
The company's activities under the new management were less impressive. During World War I it joined with Dutch Aircraft Factory and switched to building airplanes. 100 fighters and 200 aircraft engines were built during the war. Soon a car wheel and an airplane propeller became inseparably intertwined on the company logo. That's when the current slogan was adopted too: Nulla tenaci invia est via ("There are no impassable roads for persistent one"). But it didn't save the company from another bankruptcy. In 1922 Spyker's UK dealer bought out the bankrupt head office. The automobile production was renewed but only for three years. In 1925, after changing the ownership a couple more times, the company was liquidated. Altogether about 2,000 cars were built for 27 years.
The reliable and innovative Spyker cars still driving along the European roads tempted many enthusiasts to revive the "Continental Rolls-Royce". But this remained a dream until 1999, when the Dutch businessman Victor Mueller and his friend Maarten de Bruijn bought the legendary trademark and founded the new company Spyker Cars.
The company's firstling Spyker С8 Spyder was presented at the Birmingham Motor Show in October, 2000. The experts judged the new car to be worthy of the legendary Spykers' fame. However, the young company was nearly ruined by its Formula 1 team.
Spyker Cars became profitable for the first time for its seven-year-old history in 2006, earning 800 thousand euros. This prompted it to take a risky step and to buy a Formula 1 team. In the autumn 2006 Victor Mueller, inspired by Spyker's former racing glory, bought Midland F1 Racing team from the Russian businessman Alex Shnaider for $106.6 million. The Russian flag was replaced with the Dutch one and the newly created Spyker F1 team went off to take part in the "royal" races. But it turned out to be an expensive pleasure. Mueller stated in an interview: "The team was sucking our blood. We were losing in two millions euro a month because some of the sponsors didn't meet their contractual obligations, and we almost had to stop the production of street cars." Indeed, while the company made 94 cars in 2006, during the first nine months of 2007 the total output was just 24. After the first half of 2007 the net losses amounted to 29.9 million euro.
The company had no other option but to sell the F1 team, and it was done in October 2007. This time the team was bought by Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya, for decent €88,000,000,000. Having relieved a burden the young company took a sigh of relief, but soon their spirits drooped again because there wasn't enough money to run the business. Being aware of the car maker's problems, suppliers demanded payments in advance and banks refused to give credits. The Dutch had to look for a partner and found it in the Conversbank International Financial Group whose head Vladimir Antonov was a big car racing fan.
Lithuanian Snoras bank (a subsidiary of Conversbank) obtained the biggest block of Spyker Cars shares (29.8%), and the bank's management got seats on the Dutch company's Supervisory Board. In return the bank provided the necessary funds. The money will be used to launch the production of the new super-luxury off-road Spyker D12 Peking-to-Paris, and another new model. Also, a Russian-Dutch team will be put together to take part in Le Mans 24 hours race, where Spyker cars have all chances to give a decent performance. Finally, a small share of the Russian-Lithuanian money will be allocated to celebrate the anniversary: this year the nine-year- old company is going to mark 110 years since the day when the very first car under the legendary brand was built.
Nikolay Korzinov
Photoreport
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