Orange crush

The Spyker Aileron belongs in Monaco, Beverley Hills or Dubai — or in fact any wealth centre of the world. So invading a trailer park in Scottsdale, Arizona in the US in it, was about as politically correct as running through the slums while flashing your Rolex and wads of cash at the locals. Yet even the poorest residents of this ramshackle mobile home community couldn't resist a bemused smile and a quick enquiry about the power, provenance and price of this car.

In pictures: Spyker Aileron C8

That is the power of the new Dutch supercar. It magically captures the spirit of fun, decadence and wanton excess and serves it all up in a package of glowing, friendly warmth.

It is a pure visual feast of details, it's like a kid's crazy drawing of a supercar made real — a concept car that never quite makes it to production reality. And yet here it is in the flesh, running, with a license plate, an order form and the most stunning orange paint. It dances in the Arizona sunlight through the heat, haze emerging from the Audi-sourced V8. Company founder Victor Muller penned the car and wanted to create a timeless beauty: a modern classic car with epic presence and a sense of fun. And while it always looked too much on the show stand, everyone that sees this car in the flesh falls in love.

The gaping, round front end and the blindingly shiny front splitter announce its presence, and then there are the LED lights, the incredible plunging bonnet and the central air intake on the equally shiny trip of aluminium across the front of the roof. Just impossible to ignore.

The side profile is equally impressive, with two air intakes, the Gurney flap and the turbine-shaped wheels that pull hot air from the brake discs. In fact, the jet engine theme runs deep through the car and its intakes, vents, pretty much everything it can. It all follows the turbine design ethos and ties into the company history that is intertwined with aviation.

The back end provides perhaps the most dramatic view of all, externally at least, with the engine peeking through the glass panels, Ferrari-style, to the stainless steel rear diffuser and wraparound apron. The exhaust pipes even come engraved with the company logo and motto: nulla tenaci invia est via, (for the tenacious, no road is impassable). It's a fitting catch phrase for a near impossible company.

Spyker, in its first incarnation, started out as a carriage builder in the late 1800s. The First World War brought a merger with an aircraft company, which helped shape its future. But it wasn't enough to get them through the lean times ahead, and Spyker filed for bankruptcy in 1925. That was the end of the story for a full 75 years, until Dutch lawyer, businessman and car nut Victor Muller dusted off the name in 2000 to give it a second chance.

This is the second model in the line-up, and it's a grown-up GT car aimed roughly at the Aston Martin DB9 and Bentley Continental GT, but with a character all of its own.

And if the outside of the car messes with your head, you haven't seen anything yet. The whole dash is coated in tortoiseshell aluminium that catches the light and, as my seared retinas acclimatise to the savage assault, I'm confronted with Fifties science fiction.

The wheel is sourced from an Audi R8, but even that is trimmed with leather — we had to go on a hunt to find just three pieces of bare plastic in the whole interior. Everything else is leather trimmed and aluminium; the tactile toggle switches cost Dh175 apiece compared to the Dh5 parts bin specials that fill out most boutique supercars, and the new mirror assembly they're working on, fitted to the demo Spyder at the Barrett-Jackson base, costs an eye-popping Dh8,500 — just to make.

The Recaro seats are trimmed with trademark quilted leather and then there's the gear linkage, exposed to the world and inspired by the flight controls of old world planes.

It's a rolling work of art, and it's here that the Spyker marks itself apart from the undoubtedly faster Italian opposition. Even the key is special, it's a hockey puck-style milled aluminium disc that weighs heavy in the hand and forms part of the intricate start-up procedure.

Ready for take off

The puck remotely unlocks the car, a hidden button under the mirror pops the scissor door and I have to flick the fighter jet-style red covered toggle switch then press the starter button. And that's when we get the first minor disappointment. There is no savage explosion, no vicious burst of flames from a car that looks like a jet fighter in full flight. This is, when all is said and done, a mildly-tuned Audi V8, and it simply coughs into life and settles into a steady rumble.

Muller has already specced a louder exhaust that will bring the characteristic V8 burble back into play. There are bypass valves that help make the note, but even on its loudest setting it falls far short and fails to drown out the transmission whine from the Audi S8's ZF torque converter auto box that will form the only transmission in the early days.

That, too, needs to change. Spyker reasonably argues that 100 per cent of its orders in recent years have been for automatics, so they had to go this route first. The US, the Middle East, Russia and the Far East are the big markets right now, and everybody seems to want the more relaxed transmission.

But the chassis is crying out with potential and this package barely scratches the surface of its sporting aspirations. With a full aluminium chassis tweaked by the company's in-house racing team, a 1,200kg kerb weight and the exact same suspension set-up that starred this year on the Lotus Evora, the Aileron sounds like a dream sportscar, and it could be. It isn't, but it was a conscious decision to turn this big two seater into a GT.

So, comparing the 0-100kph time of 4.5 seconds to the not too dissimilarly priced Lamborghini LP560-4, Ferrari 458 Italia and Audi R8 V10 is more or less pointless, although its 300kph top speed is far from shabby, even in this company.

The ride is sublime. On the highway the car registers expansion joints with a dull thud, but there isn't even a tug on the wheel. This is a perfectly composed machine with near perfect poise, and in auto mode it is so utterly relaxed, as well as so utterly nuts on the aesthetic front that you could easily imagine buying one for the cruise factor alone. But on the backroads it's slightly less convincing.

The Lotus-tuned suspension is magical and Spyker has produced a zero understeer car with massive mechanical grip at the rear thanks to 19in wheels wrapped in 235/35 and 295/30 Michelin Pilot Sports. This diamond, though, is not without its faults.

There is no traction control, just electronic brake distribution, which goes against the gentle giant grain of the car and could catch unwary owners out. I'm not sure how to reconcile that with the GT angle, especially as it's a racing touch on a car that is categorically not a race car.

Because even in sport mode the ZF box always feels a fraction of a second behind the rest of the car and I can't quite trust it enough to hold the gear to really launch at the apex. Development will help toughen up this gearbox, but for my money it needs a six-speed manual to guarantee true immediacy and ultimate faith.

The drive is not helped by the development AP Racing steel brakes; they aren't completely progressive just yet and tend to grab halfway through the travel. Those stoppers should be silky smooth come sale time.

Spyker says their car is an "and" car, not an "or" car, meaning potential owners are those who generally have a Lamborghini and a Ferrari, and possibly a Pagani in the garage already. So when the owners want to go flat out they should take one of the other cars from the collection.

The Spyker competes on a different playing field, it's a relaxed, spectacular looking supercar that will stand out in a crowd and bring a smile to the face of everyone who sees it. For those with $218,000 to spend on a second, third or even fifth supercar, this child's dream made real could prove just too tempting.

It's a flawed underdog that has wilfully gone swimming in a sea infested with conglomerate-owned Italian and German sharks. You have to love the sheer audacity of the plan, and on his second attempt Muller has created a car that is a slug of power and a manual gearbox away from greatness in the supercar ranks. Although it is already a fantastic GT car in its own right. For the tenacious, it seems, no road is impassable.

Specs & rating