Spyker C8 Aileron Review

My morning with the Spyker C8 Aileron dawned cool and with puffy clouds strung along the blue sky. Which was fortunate, since the state had seen some of its worst weather ever. The route the Aileron had been taking all week had been washed out in places, but the Spyker Squadron, as the team calls themselves, were pretty sure the mud would be cleared out of our way.

J.P. Clinging, Spyker's development driver for North America, gave me a tour of the car while it was parked in front of the hotel in front of its sister, the Spyker C8 Laviolette. He pointed out that the longer wheelbase of the Aileron allowed for the company's first automatic transmission with paddle shifters, along with other niceties like traction control and ABS that are not offered in the rough-and-ready Laviolette. The Aileron, he said, was the Laviolette after it had gone to finishing school.

But that didn't mean it was totally finished. The car I was to drive was still a prototype built for crash-testing purposes, the fifth one built at Spyker HQ. (Luckily for my blood pressure, J.P. didn't tell me until much later that this particular car was therefore worth about $2.5 million.) They'd learned a few design lessons in these first few cars that would be corrected for the final production version of the car, like the pitch of the exhaust note and the whine of the transmission.

I slid under the open scissor door into the black, quilted leather driver's seat (the doors will open up further in the production car). No mere key here: a heavy, aluminum circle of a fob allows you to engage the ignition sequence. First, you lift the red safety switch that covers the ignition. Then, you flip the ignition toggle, followed by the Start/Stop button to fire up the engine.

We headed out of town toward Tortilla Flats, a tiny town in the hills outside Phoenix. The weather had been so bad in previous days that the Phoenix airport had shut down for several hours and roads had been flooded or covered in mud. J.P. seemed confident, though, that I'd get to some good twisties and a few flat out stretches. "Any speeding tickets you get," he reminded me, "are yours to keep, courtesy of Spyker."

This Aileron was a Euro-spec car with a speedometer calibrated in kilometers per hour, so my only reference was that 100 kph equaled 62 mph. Let's just say I didn't stop there on our way to Lost Dutchman State Park. The name of the park was a nice touch, I thought, given that the cars and their creator are Dutch.

The twisties J.P. had promised were not washed out, and they were indeed twisty, requiring quick braking around hairpin turns. The car was more than forgiving, and no matter what I did, the car could do more. Granted, I'm no Valentino Balboni, but still.

The car is seriously lacking in rear visibility, but as with most cars that can do 0-60 in 4.5 seconds, you can just hit the gas pedal and get away from anything that might be behind you.

That's not to say that the Spyker C8 Aileron is a good getaway car. This is not a car for the shy. At the end of our two-and-a-half-hour drive, J.P. and I returned the car to its tent at the Barrett-Jackson auction. Spectators turned away from the Corvettes on the mini race track to watch us pass. Everyone whipped out a camera or phone to snap a picture. As we parked, people gathered around to watch us raise the scissor doors and emerge -- awkwardly -- from the two-seater cockpit.

The car comes in 17 standard colors, but owners can pick any color they like. The same goes for the interior, where you can have your monogram embroidered into your choice of leather seats. The turned aluminum dash is made at the same facility that makes the dash for the Bugatti Veyron. As a matter of fact, Bugatti called up Spyker to find out where they had their dashes made, they liked them so well.

The Aileron has speakers, but no stereo. There's a hookup for an iPod if you insist on hearing something other than the engine positioned directly behind your seat. No doorhandles mar the car's exterior lines, so to get those scissor doors to lift from the outside, you press a button hidden under the mirror.

Back on the street, as we returned to the hotel, we stopped at a light next to a truck jacked up so far we could see the makeup of its chassis. For his part, he could see directly into the glass panel roof. He and J.P. gave each other an appreciative thumbs-up, and we blew the doors off the truck as soon as the light turned green.

• 4.2-liter Audi engine
• 6-speed ZF automatic transmission with paddle shifters
• Airbags, TPMS, ABS, traction control -- all the niceties
• Except a radio. iPods only
• Occupants will only come into contact with leather or aluminum
• Turbine theme carries throughout interior and exterior

Price as tested: $2.5 million, since it was a prototype. About $275,000 in the real world