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Carsales Staff19 Dec 2014
NEWS

Spyker bankrupt

Dutch sports car company goes belly up, but founder says it's not the end

Oddball Dutch supercar company Spyker has been declared bankrupt by a Netherlands court after it failed to pay several debts.

Spyker says it would have paid its creditors but that "the committed bridge funding did unfortunately not reach the company in time".

As a result, Spyker and its subsidiaries are now in receivership.

The supercar maker was founded in 2000 and went on to develop of number of quirky-looking sports cars, including an SUV dubbed the D12 Peking-Paris, the C8 Aileron and, most recently, the B6 Venator Spyder eleased in concept form, as both a coupe and convertible, but never made it to production.

Company founder and CEO Victor Muller insists Spyker is not dead and buried, and signaled his intention to merge the company with a manufacturer of electric aircraft.

"I will relentlessly endeavour to resurrect Spyker as soon as practically possible and, assuming we will be successful, pursue our goal to merge with a high-performance electric aircraft manufacturer and develop revolutionary electric Spykers with disruptive sustainable technology," he said.

In his parting address via press statement, Muller said that the company achieved many of its goals, including creating a start-up sports car company "from scratch" with "global distribution".

"None of the ambitions we had when we founded Spyker 15 years ago has vanished as a result of today’s events," he said, before conceding that some of the company's decisions were less than prudent.

"Over the years we undertook some daring ventures that left their marks on the company which in turn contributed to today’s demise."

Spyker made headlines in 2010 when it acquired Saab from Holden parent company General Motors. It then oversaw Saab's collapse.

Together with a failed attempt to field a competitive F1 team, Spyker has struggled to stay afloat in the past few years and was unsuccessful in generating buyer interest in its new models.

Muller channeled Britain's second world war-time leader Sir Winston Churchill in proclaiming this was not the end of Spyker.

"I would like to make clear that as far as I am concerned this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning, to quote Winston Churchill," he declared.

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