The Spyker C8 Is the Quirkiest $250,000 Exotic Car in History

when you think of sports cars you might think of the Germans with Porsche BMW or maybe the Italians with Ferrari and Lamborghini or maybe even the Americans with the Corvette and the Mustang you probably don't think of the Dutch and yet this is a Spiker c8 spider and it is an exotic sports car from the Netherlands and we're only just scratching the surface of this cars quirks before I show you all those quirks a little overview the c8 is manufactured by Spiker which is a Dutch company probably best known for this car and for the very messy purchase of Saab in 2010 when General Motors wanted nothing to do with them that move almost sent Spiker into bankruptcy but they're still around they're still making cars and in fact they're still making the c8 which has been around since 2000 in various evolutions the latest version is called the c8 prelate tour and it looks a lot like this one except with some more modern touches and design features under the hood which by the way is back here the c8 uses a 4.2 liter v8 borrowed from Audi which makes between 400 and 620 horsepower depending on which one you get in the United States bikers are incredibly rare they only made something like 253 hard car for the entire world and only a small fraction of those have come to the United States since they started importing them in 2005 today I've borrowed this Spiker from a viewer in Carlsbad California near San Diego and I'm going to show you all of its unusual quirks and features there are very very mini and then I'm gonna take it out on the road and tell you what it's like to drive a Spiker and then I'm gonna give it a dug score before I get into the Cork's a little overview of this cars pricing I have no doubt you've never seen one before so this is an original Spiker pricing window sticker in fact it's the original window sticker for this car and as you can see the original asking price wasn't cheap at just a shade under $300,000 amazingly Spikers still sell for big money between 200 and 400 thousand according to the owner of this car depending on the specifics of the car and frankly how many shoppers are in the market is this is a niche car with a rather small pool of potential buyers anyway for more of my thoughts on the Spiker experience click the link below to read my calm about my day with the Spiker on autotrader.com / oversteer now it's time to start with the cool quarks and features now I'll start this on the outside with the doors you walk up to a Spiker and you look all around the doors looking for the door handle but you won't find one that's because this car does it have a traditional door handle so how do you open the doors well it turns out you push a little button on the mirror housing and the door pops right up that's pretty easy but then again buttons I mean come on that's that's so old-school there is also another way to open the doors press a little button on the key fob and the door opens right up and that is really cool but I'm not ready to move inside the Spiker just yet because there are so many weird quirks to cover in the exterior like for example the windows first off just look at this dreamless window line that makes a u-shape around the entire car you will never see windows like that again in any other car the owner tells me there's a soft top that could be installed but it's ugly it's difficult to install and he lives in San Diego so he doesn't really need it but those are the windows in this thing and they are crazy maybe even crazier you notice how the side windows roll down but only a little bit that's because only the bottom part of the side window actually rolls down you can look down or up but you can't roll down the entire window instead that's all you get another interesting quirk of this car can be found around back and that would be Spikers logo which is an old time airplane propeller now as you look around this car you'll notice that there are two basic themes number one is aviation and number two is aluminum I'll show you what I mean as I continue throughout this another thing that's interesting about the logo is it's a Spiker on the top like you'd expect then there's the airplane propeller and then on the bottom there's latin text which translates to for the tenacious no road is impassable I guess anyway the interesting thing about the logo is you can find it in a lot of places throughout this car in fact one can argue it's sort of the unofficial third theme of this car maybe the most interesting place is on the exhausts the airplane propeller obviously doesn't appear in the exhaust but take a look there you see Spiker and then there's that latin motto it's on both exhaust in the back now like I just said this biker logo is sort of the unofficial third theme of this car and the local appears in a lot of places for example here it is in the gas cap and this isn't just a gas cap with a logo printed on it the gas cap is the low and the propeller part is where you put your hands or to get leverage to unscrew it or screw it back in after you've got gas pretty clever another interesting place the Spiker logo appears how about the windshield and in fact all the glass a lot of car companies put their brand name on the glass but Spiker puts its logo and I have to admit it does look pretty cool now also in this general vicinity you'll find two other interesting things one of which on the mirror housing is the turn signal on the side of the car europe requires that all cars sold in europe have turn signals on the side on addition the front in the back and this is where Spiker decided to integrate it into the mirror housing and speaking of the mirror housing remember how I told you aluminum is a theme in this car look at this mirror housing it's just this giant aluminum windswept piece and you can't fold it in or push it away or pull it in any direction it's just there looking nice and in keeping with this cars aluminium theme the mirror housing isn't the only piece of aluminum on the exterior of this car there's also aluminum on the doors where you go to push them down and close them there's aluminum in the windows for the part that separates the part that rolls down from the part that's fixed there's aluminum below the doors there's aluminum roll hoops behind the seats you already saw the fuel doors aluminum and then there's maybe the most interesting piece of aluminum on the entire car that would be the front splitter which is this large aluminum piece that goes all the way down the side of the car creating sort of an unbroken line of aluminum until it reaches the back wheels this is not something you want to damage as I suspect replacing this piece would not be cheap but back to lighting for a second now I already showed you those little LED turn signals on the mirror housings on the side of the car but what about the turn signals back here do you recognize them from anything they come from the Lamborghini Diablo and so did the brake lights and there's at least one other piece of interesting lighting in this biker when the doors are up so I could it and put a reflector on them to let people know that the doors are up instead they went with a little LED light strip that lets passers-by know they should be careful because the doors are up as if you could possibly miss it in this car the LED light strip also provides a little extra illumination to make it a little bit easier to get in and out of this car and then we move on to the wheels now remember I told you aviation was a theme in this car well the wheels aren't just some cool-looking wheel with a nice design instead they're designed to resemble a propeller from an old time airplane maybe even more interesting than the propeller design of the fact that the spider has center lock wheels not lug nuts that design is usually used on race cars and it would have been really rare in 2004 2000 when this car was originally being sold but that's not my favorite thing about the center lock wheels my favorite thing about the center lock wheels is the little guide printed on the wheels to let you know how to take them off instead of saying tighten or loosen it says do an undo I think that maybe a mistranslation from Dutch I also like the fact that like in so many other places in this car the center lock wheels have the Spiker logo on them very tiny print but it's there and then it's time to move inside to talk about maybe the most interesting propeller related detail in this car and that would be the steering wheel now the early Spiker models came out with a steering wheel that resembles a propeller and it has to be one of the coolest modern steering wheels in the entire car industry unfortunately when the c8 was sold in the united states they ditched the propeller wheel I always assumed that was because of airbags but this car has the next generation Spiker wheel and it doesn't have an airbag so it doesn't have the propeller or an airbag the owner tells me he really really wants one but they are absolutely impossible to find nobody who has one has given him up and Spiker isn't making any more interestingly the steering wheel on this car was made by Lotus it just has the Spiker logo in the middle and later Spiker models just use the steering wheel from a Lamborghini Guyardo and wasn't really special at all but everybody wants that steering wheel with the propeller on it fortunately the propeller theme was continued in at least one place in the interior and that would be the climate control vents there's only three one for the driver two for the passenger and they are built tremendously well just moving them takes a surprising amount of force but they do resemble a propeller just as the steering wheel did originally and then we must talk about the shifter which is probably this cars most famous design detail and by far the coolest shifter that has ever existed in any car Ferrari dated shifter paw it's nothing compared to this the shifter is mounted on this giant metal bar that runs from the front to the back of the car and the linkage that allows the shifter changing gear is exposed not only is that incredibly cool looking but the thing just feels so mechanical and it sounds mechanical when you change here you can hear it going to every year and it is just the coolest thing in the world this is one of the all-time great shifter designs it's one of the things I always think about when I think about Speicher another interesting Spiker CH shifter fact number one you can't shift into reverse when the car is off I've never seen that before in any other stick shift car you have to turn the car on and once you do you can't shift into reverse and less you know the trick the top of the shifter is actually a button push that and that allows you to get all the way over to reverse otherwise climb in a Spiker and try to steal it you don't know that you'll probably never be able to back up but the shifter is nowhere near the only cool thing or interesting quirk about the interior as you can probably see from this angle one of the craziest things about this interior is everything is aluminum and I mean everything is aluminum the entire dashboard as alone of the center console is aluminum going all the way up between the seats where there's another Spiker propeller logo of course the shifter is aluminum as you already saw and so is the top of the parking brake handle also aluminum are the turn signal levers and a lever for the high beams the door grab handles aluminum even the mirror controls are aluminum the petals are aluminum too and then you have the toggle switches yes that's right the toggle switches now you've probably seen toggle switches to control various car functions in the Mini Cooper but those are little baby toggle switches compared to this car in this car each toggle switch is fashioned out of a block of aluminum and they are all tremendously hard to push and there is a toggle switch for everything this car doesn't have stupid plastic buttons like yours you want to turn on the wipers toggle switch you want to turn the lights toggle switch fog lights hazard lights you can even put it in sport mode with the toggle switch although the owner tells me it's really just sport for the exhaust makes the exhaust louder if it's in sport mode or its quiet mode if you take it out of sport mode doesn't actually do anything else to the rest of the car there are toggle switches even for the climate control turn on air-conditioning toggle switch turn on the windshield defogger toggle switch change where the air is coming out toggle switch it's all incredibly cool it feels incredibly nice and of course it is all incredibly aluminum and then we have the item that goes hand-in-hand with the toggle switch maybe even more impressive than the switches themselves that would be the little lights for every little item that you turn on with the switches like the headlights in the hazard lights they each have their own housing they're not just hidden in the gauge cluster and some little plastic cutout each one has its own individual spot on the dashboard and each one has its own individual housing and most of them light up in various colors like you'd expect it is one of the craziest pieces of attention to detail I've ever seen just simply putting on the lights or the air conditioning in this car and it's the same story with the other warning lights like for example the seatbelt warning light the oil pressure temperature warning light each one of those also has their own housing just above the climate controls which brings us to the climate controls these are some of the most bizarre climate controls I've ever seen it's hard to even really explain it but basically there are two dials and you turn them one is for temperature and one is for fan speed now the temperature dial you turn it from blue to red and it's not a lecture on 'ok you can actually see the blue and red background changing as you turn the dial the fan speed is the same deal you turn from min to max and as you turn it toward max more and more lines appear inside the dial giving it more and more fan speed I've never sailor like this before and it is so weird and so Spiker oh and by the way before I get too far from the aluminum like those little Tonga switches I should mention that even the owner's manual is aluminum in this car it's separated into three separate books each of which look like they were composed in Microsoft Word using the Tahoma font now the interesting thing about the interior beyond the aluminum is just how much leather is in this interior it's all full leather even all the way down into the petal box which is rare most car companies don't bother with leather down there because your feet go down there and your shoes and you'll never really look down there but this car has leather down there and everywhere and they're stitching in between an all green stitching to match the green exterior color of this car in fact virtually every surface of this interior is either leather or aluminum aside from the seat belt and the seat belt buckle those are the only two I found that aren't I'm serious but no discussion of the toggle switches would be complete without discuss the power window switches now they're located exactly where you'd expect on the door panel like in your normal car but they too are toggle switches and they too feel very heavy and require a lot of pressure if you want to roll the window up or down now because the switches are aluminum they couldn't exactly light them up so instead spike our heads a little green light in the housing for the power window switches to illuminate them at night kind of like an alien is shining a light on your power windows switches next up back to the steering wheel and the horn now the leather pads in the steering wheel they don't really do anything you push on it nothing happens the horn is only on a little Spiker logo right in the middle push it the horn sound and it sounds like a normal horn take a listen another interesting thing about the steering wheel because they ditch the propeller wheel for this car and this one has a thicker Center you can't actually see when you've turned on the turn signals or the high beams which are the two stalks behind the steering wheel so you're just kind of left to guess the propeller wheel you can easily see those things but not in this one so you put them on and if you turn the wheel you can see them but if the wheel is in its normal straight position you can't and another interesting interior feature this car has no seat controls at least none that you can see they're not on the side of the seat they're not on the door on the side of the door cell actually they're hidden there's two little buttons off to the right on the passenger seat in the left on the driver's seat aluminum of course you push it in their power and they adjust the seat back there's also a little lever and you can use hidden near the back of the seat that allows for further seat adjustment this lever even though no one will ever see it is of course aluminum install in a subject of weird buttons next we have to discuss this car starting procedure it's an entire process first you have to have your foot on the clutch that's pretty common in stick shift cars then you have to be in neutral you can't start this car in gear then you go up to the dashboard you find a little red cover over the ignition button you lift up the cover just like in an airplane remember the aviation theme and you turn on the ignition that turns on the accessories to the car then you push the engine start/stop button and only then does the car roar to life the owner of this car tells me he leaves it unlocked everywhere because he figures no one will ever be able to figure out how to open the doors much less actually get it started if they're trying to steal it a couple of other interesting things they interior this car how about the fact that even the cover over the rearview mirror is leather most cars you'll never see the back of the rearview mirror but in this car because of that frameless glass the fact that the mirror is mounted right on it you will see the back of the mirror so they covered it in leather like just about everything else in this interior then there's one of my favorite spike your corks that would be the glovebox pulled deep aluminum handle of course in the glove box opens and that's normal pull it more and it opens even more it's got this dual opening action the glove box it it's very odd nonetheless it's kind of cool now the glove box hides one of this cars most bizarre and unusual quirks and that would be the second ignition unlike a lot of newer cars this car has a proximity key so it recognizes when the key is inside and when it senses that it allows you to turn on the ignition and press that little start button to start the car but if for some reason it isn't recognizing the key you have a backup option in the glovebox there is a little ignition in there that can be turned on with an actual key and so if you want to start the car without using the regular starter button you lean over to the glovebox put the key in twist it and then that's another way you can start the Spiker it's the hidden ignition switch that no one will ever know about I've seen a few cars with secondary ignition switches in case the button fails but I've never seen one that hides it in the glovebox that is quite unusual now you can see that this car is using an audi key and like I mentioned before it has an Audi v8 engine now the Spiker actually had its own unique key with a very unique design it was fitting to the rest of the car but for whatever reason this Spiker wasn't delivered to this owner used with that key so he just uses the audi key although he doesn't really use it right because he presses the starter button every time he gets inside he would only use the key if you were going to get into the glovebox and activate the secondary ignition switch something else I really like about that whole secondary ignition in the glovebox thing is that if the battery in your key fob fails and dust the car doesn't detect the key fob anymore so the starter button won't work you have to reach all the way over there into the glovebox to turn on the car but you also have to go through that whole starting procedure so you have to have your foot on the clutch while simultaneously reaching over to the glovebox they couldn't have possibly put it in a less convenient location and speaking of things that are not very convenient how about the parking brake which is mounted not over here in the driver's side or in the middle but in the passenger-side footwell also interesting or the Spikers gauges they are of course surrounded in aluminum and they use a very classy font they also have the Spiker logo inside them and the word Spiker written in Spikers script I suppose they're not all that unusual but they're worth looking at and then we have the final interesting detail of the interior and that would be the door handles this car has two doors but it has three door handles one on the driver door one in the passenger door and then they use another door handle so you can open the hood it's not some weird latch or hood release like in every other car it's the exact same aluminum door handle they use on the doors now once you open the Spikers engine cover you're discovered that this isn't just an engine cover of course the engine is back here the Audi v8 and mid-mounted right behind the seats but this is also where the trunk is the two share space under the engine cover the trunk is leather lined once again beautiful with green stitching and green carpeting to match the outside of the car a couple of interesting things about the engine are the VW and Audi logos you'll find if you look closely after all it is an Audi v8 although doesn't have outtie printed across the top of the engine like it does when it's installed in an Audi there's a VW logo here and an Audi logo here and if you look on the door latch you'll find an Audi logo too interestingly there's a little bit of Spiker in this engine too there's a little yellow label with a picture of a spider on it placed under the hood it shows you exactly how much you're supposed to tighten the wheels using the center lock wheels tightening tool and that tool to tighten or remove the wheels can be found up here now this is the front of the car there's no storage up here but you can see the entire front clamshell comes up revealing basically all of the cars inner workings including the inboard suspension which is kind of a cool look now that tool the one that tightens and loosens the wheels that is found inside the tool kit which is stuck down here under a leather strap you'd never know it was there unless you knew it was there we pull out the tool kit a minute ago this the first time the owner had ever taken it out and it's actually surprisingly comprehensive it has all the tools you'd expect a screwdriver the wheel tightener it also has bulbs and then it has my favorite thing an extra key fob battery and that key fob in this car is really important because the proximity key and that's how you turn the car on so if the battery dies you got an extra another interesting thing under the clamshell that would be something that most Spiker owners probably don't even know about that is the battery cutoff and the lock out now here's how this works there's a little on/off switch for the battery located underneath here you can turn the battery off if you're gonna park this car for a while you don't want someone to come up and steal it now that's not that uncommon but what is uncommon is the little spot where you can place the key in order to lock the clamshell normally it's covered with this little aluminum cover but you move the cover to the side and you can lock or unlock the clamshell so theoretically you could turn off the battery lock the clamshell and then no one will be able to get inside this car in order to turn it on that's a really good idea in a car like this with a proximity key because if you just grab the key and if you can figure out how to open the door and then turn on the ignition and start the car you can just drive away in it but if you've locked the clamshell with the hidden little key lock and turn off the battery no one will ever be able to start this car unless they know how to do that stuff which no one will unless they've seen this video and then of course there's the all-important exhaust mode and so those are all the weird quirks and the cool features of the Spiker c8 spider I told you it was full of them now it's time to get this thing out on the road and see just how well the Dutch can make an exotic sports car driving the Speicher [Music] the first thing you notice is just how exposed you are there's not even Sun visors and so you're just completely open to the world there's just glass and then the rim of the glass and then there's just there's the world out there you're so open in this car there are those roll loops behind the seats but from where I'm sitting it looks like if there was a rollover we would just pitch people then instantly you just hear the sound this car sounds if the tone of the exhaust isn't the best I've heard but just a little bit of throttle it gives you that exhaust note it's amazing I love moving the shifter it feels like I'm really doing something it feels like I I matter in this world on it sounds great it feels great moving this shifter I know that's a big thing everybody's always wondering about with this car and the answer is it's just as good as you were hoping it would be it doesn't look like a usual shifter but you you never feel like you're gonna screw up the sound is so good and it's the exhaust so moved up a little higher than in a normal car and of course because it's open you just hear it and hear it and hear it the steering is great it's really precise there's a little bit of vagueness on center última this is over a ten year old car but not much car is really well down steep in town in this car this is the brightest I've ever driven a car there's there's really nothing to stop just Sun from coming at you this is the perfect Southern California car the pet the brake pedal is quite interesting there's a lot of travel to the brake pedal and you really kind of have to give it a deep stab if you actually want to stop it's a little unnerving at first coming up to a hard corner it's like you put on the brake and nothing really happens then you really have to put on the brake sound is just I love it it's just there and there and there there's just sound for days in this car nonetheless the drawback is this isn't a car you're gonna be able to have a conversation and hang out with someone and just relax in between the wind coming all around the cabin there's not really a top you want to use and the sound there's a lot of noise in this thing the ride quality is pretty good it's a little harsh but it's a sports car and so it's supposed to be you do here's some creaking and stuff mainly from the windows handling is excellent very predictable but you really got to get on the brake in order to slow this car down I'm actually surprised by it something that's very unsettling immediately tired I got a straightaway here I'm gonna open it up a little bit oh that's awesome the sound is so amazing this car is not tremendously fast I don't even think it's as fast as the r8 but you don't really even care all that much when you're driving it because you're having so much fun doing all sorts of other stuff I just can't believe even driving this car I can't go in probably 30 but it feels like such an event not only is the interior so cool but the sound is so amazing the glass feels like I'm doing something very special today so that's the Spiker c8 spider one of just a few hundred in the world probably one just a few dozen in the United States a Dutch exotic car with an Audi v8 and the longest list of quirks and features I think I've ever seen in other words all the makings of an excellent YouTube video anyway time to give this car a dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling I like how the Spiker looks but I understand that some people think it's a little over styled visually there's a lot to take in and it certainly is it classically beautiful but it's definitely cool-looking I'm giving it a 7 out of 10 next up is acceleration the c8 does 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds giving it a 7 out of 10 for handling the Spiker is good but not the best it's precise and sharp for its time but modern cars are a few steps forward and it gets a 6 out of 10 cool factor however is massive I've been to Cars and Coffee events where Spikers have shown up and the entire thing empties to go look at the Spiker when I posted a picture of this car on my Instagram it quickly became the most liked car I had ever posted more than the 918 spyder to me it falls only just short of the ultra cars earning a 9 out of 10 importance however is the opposite the c8 is cool sure but it doesn't hail from a highly significant automaker and the engine is built by someone else I struggled to give it more than a 6 out of 10 bringing the total weekend score to a 35 out of 50 which is a strong showing next up are the daily categories starting with features the Spiker does predictably badly as it focuses more on quality and beauty than equipment and it gets a 3 out of 10 as for comfort the ride is harsh but typical of sports cars and it earns a 4 out of 10 quality however is a strong suit this is probably the nicest interior I've ever been in in terms of layout and overall feel and look of materials this car would get a 10 if that was the only item this category measured but quality also considers reliability and Audi isn't exactly known for dependable drive trains and then there's the question of finding someone to work on this car still for that interior I can't give it anything less than an 8 out of 10 practicality is low this car has only two seats not much of a top and just 4.2 cubic feet of cargo space giving it a 2 out of 10 finally there's value this car has held its value well but it's still tremendously expensive especially compared the r8 which has a similar powertrain it gets a seven out of ten mainly for its strong residuals bringing the total daily score to twenty four out of 50 add it up in the total dug score is fifty nine which is decent but not amazing then again the c8 is an unusual car head-turning and cool ultra high quality but filled with weird quirks it's an acquired taste that only appeals to certain people [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 3,270,702

Rating: 4.8563876 out of 5

Keywords: spyker c8, spyker, spyker c8 spyder, c8 spyder, spyker c12, spyker car, spyker sports car, weird car, exotic car, doug demuro, demuro

Id: NKin_i1pcFA

Length: 27min 34sec (1654 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 27 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Zpstana]

This car is peak demuro

[u/Doug-DeMuro]

This is one of my favorite videos I've ever made. I hope everyone enjoys it!

[u/buckmonaco]

Spyker is as if Horacio Pagani took a month long vacation to Amsterdam and sampled everything they had to offer.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm about 9 minutes into the video and that's enough for me to say this is the coolest car Doug has ever reviewed.

edit: (SPOILER) /u/doug-demuro Gotta disagree with you on the cool factor -- this thing should have earned a 10. Or an 11.

[u/HondaJunkie]

Good job /u/Doug-DeMuro you didn't call it a F-150!

[u/Madkows]

I hope you motherfuckers like Q U I R K S

[u/cobrareaper]

Didn't know these were so rare! I saw one at a car meet in LA a month ago, it looks hilarious with all the doors/compartments open.

[u/Bezant]

Good job Doug now he's gonna have to lock his car.

[u/intercede007]

Cool story - Spyker took the car racing. I was able to see it at Sebring in 2006.

https://i.imgur.com/xcXap95.jpg