Spyker B6 Venator Spyder Concept arrives at Pebble Beach

The open-topped version of Spyker’s Venator – the Spyker B6 Venator Spyder Concept – has been revealed at Pebble Beach with production plans for 2014.

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You have to admire Victor Muller’s tenacity, and you have to admire the way he’s sketched the B6 Venator out on the back of a fag packet and got the car world salivating over a car that’s really just a set of pretty clothes.

Because glorious though the B6 Venator is – and Victor has managed to rub out the roof on the back of his fag packet in a very convincing way to deliver the Spyker B6 Venator Spyder Concept – it must be someone else’s car to start with.

There is no way Spyker has the money – despite Victor’s Gold Medal in investment  garnering – or has had the time to develop the B6 Ventaor from scratch, so he’s using something else under the very pretty skin he’s created for the Venator.

Early money was on the Lotus Evora – it fits in size and shape and spec – but there’s money on the now defunct Artega GT sitting under Victor’s new clothes. Which, in some ways, makes more sense.

It makes sense because Artega went bust just a short time before Victor pulled his Venator out of the hat, and its remnants were bought up by Paragon – a German parts maker – who had no intention of resuming Artega production.

So there’s a lot of logic that it’s the Artega’s underpinnings and tooling that have been bought for a song from Paragon (or, more likely, on the basis of ‘My dear friend Paragon, why not let me help you get rid of this worthless Artega tooling?’ said the smooth operator from the Low Countries) to create the B6 Venator.

But if that is the case, and we’re increasingly convinced it is, it’s no bad thing because the Artega GT’s underpinning were properly credible, it weighed in at only around 1200kg and got powered by a V6 from VW.

Now all Victor needs is someone to build the Artega with Spyker clothes for him to become the perfect middle man.

Because, just as Spyker doesn’t have the ability to have developed the B6 Venator, it doesn’t have the ability to build it either.

But then, not having the means or capacity to do something has never stopped Victor Muller before.