Spyker 15/22HP Three-Quarter Landaulette
This Spyker was discovered in France in the 1960s. It is the only surviving Spyker Landaulette.
Like the 1907 Double Phaeton on display in the museum, this model too has a 15/22 hp engine with a low-pressure lubrication system which prevented the car from emitting blue smoke.
1907 was a bad year for the Spyker factory, but not only in a business sense. That year, the ferry ‘Berlin’ was crossing the North Sea to England when it sank off the coast of Hook of Holland; Hendrik-Jan Spijker and the marque’s British agent Frederick Elsworth both drowned. Jacobus Spijker then decided to retire from the company.
At the beginning of the year the company appeared to be doing well, but sales dropped and a large French order was cancelled. Spyker was finally declared bankrupt, but managed to resurrect itself under new management.
The only highlight for the marque in 1907 was that the Frenchman Charles Godard, behind the wheel of a Spyker, came second in the epic Peking to Paris race.