Warning: Uninitialized string offset 0 in /home/doublede/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-rewrite.php on line 1

Warning: Uninitialized string offset 0 in /home/doublede/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-rewrite.php on line 1
{"id":9755,"date":"2014-12-21T14:35:29","date_gmt":"2014-12-21T14:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/?p=9755"},"modified":"2014-12-21T14:35:29","modified_gmt":"2014-12-21T14:35:29","slug":"the-flying-dutchmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.doubledeclutch.com\/?p=9755","title":{"rendered":"The Flying Dutchmen"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

$\"2002$ <\/a><\/p>\n

News came down the Mojo Wire this week that Spyker had been forced into bankrupcy. I regard this as a great shame as this quirky bunch of Dutch guys were genuine sports-car people, both on and off the tracks.<\/p>\n

$\"2002$ <\/a><\/p>\n

They brought welcome relief from the armadas of Porsches that largely made up the LM GT grid in the early part of this century. They were part of a Dutch endurance racing movement of the time, inspired by the efforts of Toine and Mike Hezemans, and, of course, Jan Lammers and Racing for Holland.<\/p>\n

$\"2002$ <\/a><\/p>\n

And they were fun guys to work with. Their d\u00e9but outing came at the 2002 Sebring 12 Hours, a tough baptism as anyone who races in the Central Highlands will attest. They failed to finish sustaining accident damage after 93 laps.<\/p>\n

$\"2002$ <\/a><\/p>\n

Peter Kox, Derek Hill and Hans Hugenholz were the crew of the\u00a0Spyker C8 Double-12R in Florida. The car was powered by a Heini Mader BMW-based 4 litre V8. Hans Reiter can be seen here at Tech Inspection as Reiter Engineering provided the technical and engineering support in the early stages of the project.<\/p>\n

$\"2002$ <\/a><\/p>\n

The car was designed by Maarten de Brujin utilising aluminium wherever possible and his efforts inspired Dutch industrialist, Victor Muller, to finance the revival of this pioneering Dutch brand.<\/p>\n

$\"2002$ <\/a><\/p>\n

The bodywork was hand made at Coventry Prototype Panels. The whole project marched to a different drum beat, and that was one of the elements that gave it such appeal.<\/p>\n

$\"2002$ <\/a><\/p>\n

One issue that hampered the programme in the early years were the weight and restrictor penalties imposed due to three factors; failing to build the minimum run of 25 vehicles, failing to supply ‘low volume’ homologation papers and finally having too high a percentage of racing cars to road cars produced.<\/p>\n

$\"2002$ <\/a><\/p>\n

Victor has finally been forced to give up, but I, for one, would not surprised to see another revival, In his note explaining the current state of play he declared:\u00a0“They can count on us continuing to live by the Spyker axiom \u201cNulla Tenaci Invia est Via\u201d (Latin for \u201cFor the tenacious no road is impassible\u201d).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

John Brooks, December, 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\t\t