Spyker Revives D8 Super-SUV Plans

Spyker NV aims to produce an updated version of the D8 Peking-to-Paris SUV concept it unveiled at the Geneva auto show eight years ago, according to Autocar.

Spyker CEO Victor Muller tells the British enthusiast magazine that the vehicle, dubbed the P2P, has been fully engineered but not yet tooled. He estimates global sales of 1,000 units for the super-SUV, mainly in China and Russia.

Muller said last year the P2P would be priced at about $250,000. He opines to Autocar that the 375-hp vehicle will be "usable" but also "a beast."

It isn't clear if the vehicle will ride on the Phoenix platform developed by Spyker when the Dutch supercar company owned Saab Automobile. Saab went bankrupt in 2011 after Spyker was unable to sell the company to China's Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co.

But last summer Spyker and Youngman revealed plans to set up two joint ventures that would use the Phoenix platform, one to make premium cars and the second to build SUVs. Youngman was to gain 75% ownership of the SUV venture, called Spyker P2P BV, by investing $31 million in it over several years.

Muller said five months ago that the two companies had reached a deal under which Youngman injected about $13 million into Spyker and shouldered all Spyker shareholder debt in exchange for equity. The deal gave Spyker a $167 million profit last year (its first since the company was relaunched in 2000), according to Muller.

He didn't tell Autocar when the all-wheel-drive P2P might go into production. But the magazine says Spyker's immediate priority is to launch the B6 Venator, an "affordable" $125,000-$150,000 mid-engine sports car that debuted at the Geneva show in March.

The carbon-fiber-bodied B6 is scheduled to debut in Europe and much of Asia by mid-2014 and reach the American market a few months later.