Salt Lake City track event

[rhyno]

Spyker of Calgary has asked me to join them in a track event in Salt Lake City that is being put on by Spyker. I will get seat time in ALL there cars including the NEW Aileron with the automatic gearbox!! I'm so excited to be invited to this event, I will take lots of pictures and post them up here. This event will take place on Sept 1st.

[bucciali]

Sweet! That's very exciting. Hope you will have a great day. And as always......looking forward to the pictures!

[Mattjs33]

That's awesome. Have a great time!

[SpykerOwner]

Have a great event. I am sure a lot of us envy you now

[Laviolette GT2R]

Have a great event. I am sure a lot of us envy you now

YEP !

But I am very happy for you, have fun !

[Wouter]

Thats nice...have fun Rhyno and don't forget to share your pictures here .

[F Spider]

The East Coast Event will take place in late October

[Basokolow]

Let me know when/where!

[rhyno]

I have to say that I have never been to a Automobile event like this before. I wasn't really sure what to expect but Spyker definitely outdid them self's. This was the first time Spyker has ever done a product launch that was on this scale and involved this many people including the public. Let me start from the beginning. Andrew Baker the Sales Manager of Spyker of Calgary picked 7 lucky customers to join him on a Private Jet from Calgary to Salt lake city. I was one of these lucky people!!! When we got to Miller Motorsports there was 5 Spykers lined up (2 Ailerons, 2 Spyders and 1 Laviolette). There was about 30 people invited to day one of this 3 day event. Spyker of San Fran and Salt Lake City where there with customers. A journalist from Autoweek and Sam from Road and track where also there. We all joined up with the Spyker people and did a group picture in front of all the cars. Sam was doing a one page spread about the Aileron for Road and Track magazine, he also said there would be a bigger article on there website. After the picture we got introduced to all the main Spyker people. A big surprise was that Victor Mueller was also here for the Launch Event!

[rhyno]

They had on display a set of Louis Vuitton luggage that is fitted to the car, this is a $22,000 option. They had a LV tool kit that fit's under the front hood in the open elements that cost $5,000. They had a Swissvox briefcase that holds all the cleaning products for the car for $1,500. Last they had a briefcase that had all the leather and paint colors so you could build your car.

[rhyno]

Spyker had set up the day in three parts. Part one for are group was going down to the race track and getting seat time in all three cars. The first lap we sat in the passenger seat then after that we drove each car around the track with a instructor/pro driver. The first car I drove was 083 the C8 spyder, this is by far my favorite of the spyker cars to drive. The handling is so precise and you can really drive this car through the corners with the throttle. I have driven two other spyders before so this was my third. The second car I got to drive was the 162 Laviolette. I had never driven one before but It had the same driving feel as the spyder which I like, this car also has had a Airbag steering wheel installed which I will talk about later The third car that I got to drive was the dark grey 253 Aileron automatic. I have to say that all the Aileron's that are built so far are ALL prototype preproduction cars and all are automatics. On this car the gear indicator function on the dash did not work and the brakes had a weird feel to them, you had to push hard on the pedal for the brakes to start to work but then they where very touchy. The auto gearbox has a torque converter so it's a true automatic transmission, I felt the shifts could have been faster especially on downshifts. I don't think this transmission is that good for the track but it will be very good for the street, I think most normal driver's will pick this transmission. Only the hard core will pick the perfect stick shift! The handling on the Aileron is also softer and not as hardcore as the C8, you do notice that this is a bigger car.

[rhyno]

Laviolette 162

[rhyno]

Aileron 253

[rhyno]

The second part of the day was a Autocross track. This is a small course that is marked by cones that you drive around. We got to use 148 C8 spyder for this event. This car I should tell you has 15,000 hard miles, it is still on it's original clutch, they just changed the original tires and it has had no major problems. One small note on this car, when they went to paint it the paint code number got messed up and it got painted a Ferrari color by accident! We got two laps each before we did a team time trial. It was are team vs Salt Lake vs San Fran. Are team came in second and the winning team was San Fran, they got autographed pictures from Victor Mueller for winning. Good Job Team SAN FRAN!!!!! Driving the autocross really let you take the spyder to it's limits, one of are team spun the car on the last corner of the course. This was my favorite part! They also had two camera's on the car and they will be sending everyone a video of them autocrossing the spyder.

[rhyno]

The last part of the day for us was a presentation done by Victor. He went through the history of Spyker, the racing heritage, the sponsorship by Louis Vuitton, the F1 program, and more. Some of the highlights for me where finding out that Aileron 250 is the Aileron Spyder, they are working on removing the header rail for the production car. In 6 months the D8 will be launched with 24" wheels, a 565hp Kompressor Cadillac CTS-V motor, they will also make a winter rim and tire package. The D8 will around 3800 pounds, it will be the fastest production SUV and cost around $250,000. I also found out that there is a easy way and a hard way for a Airbag steering wheel to be converted to older cars. At some point in production all cars where pre wired for air bag wheels, if they are prewired it is very easy to do the conversion and cost's around $5,000. 162 was prewired and has had the conversion done. If they are a older car that is not prewired then it can be done but the whole interior would have to be taken out in order to re wire the chassis and would cost alot!