The Spyker D12 Peking-to-Paris Was An SUV Well Ahead Of Its Time

Pick a major car manufacturer, quite literally any you like. Once you’ve done that, take a look at its current range of cars and we’ll guarantee you’re more likely than not to find it offers a ‘coupe-SUV’.

Horrid terminology aside, nearly everyone is in the game of putting sloped roofs on its big, ostentatious crossovers these days to the point where you wonder when it’ll become unfashionable again. However, that trend only really kicked off in the late 2010s – and one unexpected manufacturer very nearly put themselves well ahead of the curve.

For those of you without an interest in super niche European sports car manufacturers, Spyker is a Dutch company that made a reputation of itself for the bizarre yet absolutely gorgeous C8 sports car. With a bit of relative success from that car under its belt, Spyker considered broadening its horizons and unveiled its next step at the 2006 Geneva Motor Show.

This was revealed as the D12 Peking-to-Paris, named as such for two reasons. The ‘Peking-to-Paris’ bit refers to a 1907 endurance race from China to France, with ‘D12’ referring to the engine - a 6.0-litre Volkswagen W12.

Despite being a sloped-roof crossover long before those were even in the consciousness of the car-buying masses, it still looked a lot like a C8 – right down to the quilted leather interior with that gorgeous exposed gear linkage. It had a few quirks of its own though, including suicide doors.

It had a proper 4x4 all-wheel-drive system, and a six-speed manual, which 500bhp from the W12 was sent through. It’d crack 0-62mph in five seconds flat despite weighing 1,850kg – a figure that doesn’t seem so bad now but for 2006, was quite something.

This wasn’t just a concept of what Spyker could do, it was a showcase of what it planned to do. According to the manufacturer, it took “well over” 100 orders soon after its Geneva reveal.

For a success story, this would be the part where we tell you Spyker built every one of those cars and off the back of that entered an era of huge success. If that had happened, we probably wouldn’t be writing this feature though.

Instead, things took a turn for the worse for Spyker. It wasn’t anything directly to do with the D12, but rather a series of other poor financial decisions.

First of all, it spent a fortune on buying the Minardi F1 team, renamed it Spyker and then turned up to races. That’s all that could be said for it, really. It would eventually be sold in 2008 to Indian businessman Vijay Mallya, who would rename it Force India (and since has been rebranded since then a couple of times before becoming Aston Martin), at a €20m loss.

Then, in 2010, it was successful in its long-running bid to buy Saab from General Motors for $394m - $74m of that in cash and $320m in company stocks. It wasn’t even before the year was out that Saab ran out of cash, leading to its bankruptcy in 2011.

It was 2010 when the D12, still no closer to being built, became the D8, looking the same but now with the intention of using a Koenigsegg 5.0-litre V8. It never came to fruition, with Spyker eventually dealing with bankruptcy issues of its own, and deciding to stay in its lane of niche but beautiful sports cars.

Had it ended up in production, would the Spyker D12 have changed the course of SUV history? Probably not, perhaps at best becoming an interesting footnote for journalists to mention in ‘coupe-SUV’ reviews going forward. Yet, it’s a shame the world never got to find out for sure.