EXOTIC-SPORTS-CAR entrepreneurs are the world's most optimistic accountants: Enzo Ferrari, Carroll Shelby, Aston Martin's David Brown. Spyker Cars Chief Executive Victor Muller attempted to swoop in and keep Saab going, eventually with Chinese help, after General Motors GM +0.22% dumped it, but the effort ended in
2011 with the Dutch company about €160 million ($210 million) in the red.
In 2012, Mr. Muller said in a recent interview, the company restructured its debt and cut deals with suppliers, bringing the company a €125 million net profit that moved it slightly into "positive equity territory," even though production of the company's singular C8 Aileron sports car almost ground to a halt. These are rather magic beans. Nonetheless, armed with a €10 million stake from Chinese heavy-vehicle maker Youngman—which was also party to the Saab deal—Spyker Cars is staged for its "resurgence": the world premiere of the B6 Venator Concept at the Geneva Motor Show, Tuesday.
Venator is Latin for "hunter." Mr. Muller explained that in World War I, the Dutch called fighter planes "hunters" (the historic Spyker company built strut-and-canvas warplanes and grand touring cars). The B6 Venator, in brief: midengine, 375-horsepower V6; six-speed automatic transmission; aluminum chassis, carbon-fiber body; under 3,080 pounds. That's a weight-to-power ratio of 8.21 pounds per horsepower (a little better than the Porsche 911 Carrera's) in a footprint the size of a Porsche Boxster. But "anybody who says they're going to build a Porsche killer is crazy," Mr. Muller emphasized.
The Venator also bears a striking resemblance, in profile and in specification, to the Toyota-powered Lotus Evora S, though Mr. Muller declined to specify his powertrain supplier. Mr. Muller says he played the role of designer, and the Venator, he promises, will have all the piquant details of Spyker's previous cars, an aesthetic evoking an era of silk scarves and aerial chivalry: the machine-turned aluminum dash; the exposed gearshift mechanism; the rich, quilted leather. The italicized script logo on the Venator's grille is a reproduction of the company's 1903 logo.
The B6 Venator will be priced between €125,000 and €150,000, said Mr. Muller. He anticipates production numbers "in the hundreds."
Meanwhile, Spyker and Youngman have signed a joint-venture agreement to develop Spyker's P2P, the Peking-to-Paris super-sport-utility vehicle first seen at the 2006 Geneva show. And Spyker and Youngman will form a new company called Spyker Phoenix to build a premium vehicle based on Saab's Phoenix platform.
