Councillor Ken Taylor (leader Coventry City Council), Brendan O’Toole and Victor Muller. Actually, even without the caption, we reckon you could have worked out who's who.
Spyker’s founder Victor Muller and Spyker Chairman Vladimir Antonov have joined CPP Manufacturing’s Brendan O’Toole in Coventry to celebrate CPP manufacturing the Spyker Aileron.
A few months ago we reported that Spyker were moving production of their cars to the UK, in to the very capable hands of CPP Manufacturing, a Coventry-based specialist company already responsible for making most of what goes in to a Spyker. At the time we noted that we thought it was a great move by Spyker that would result in their cars being bolted together even better than before, thanks to the expertise of CPP.
One Cars UK reader left a comment on that article questioning whether the Saab takeover by Spyker would jeapordise the deal with CPP and see Spyker production being moved once again, this time to Trollhattan. Victor Muller – Spyker’s boss – told Cars UK that would categorically not happen. And for very good reason.
Mass-producing cars – like Saabs – is a very different process to building a hand-made car like the Spyker Aileron. The skills needed to fabricate a car from scratch are rare indeed and much sought-after. Which is why CPP – acknowledged to be as good as it gets in the industry – can rest easy that their deal with Spyker will see Spykers being built in Coventry for the foreseeable future.
CPP & Spyker sent us this image of the new facility for building Spykers which will be in full flow in around a month's time.
But CPP aren’t just building Spykers – and up to 5 a day is possible – but other very desirable cars as well. The £1.2 million Aston Martin One-77 is being produced at CPP as are many one-off specials for companies like Bentley and Zagato. But it’s not just cars that get the benefit of CPP’s expertise. They produce some incredible bespoke furniture in metal as one-off commissions; they’ve produced exquisite speaker cabinets for KEF MUON and a wonderful limited-run sophisticated graphic coffee table that takes 300 hours of hand polishing to perfect . The list goes on.
But yesterday was about celebrating full scale production of Spykers at CPP, and Victor Muller and Spyker Chairman Vladimir Antonov joined CPP’s MD Brendan O’Toole to celebrate the deal. Victor was effusive in his praise for CPP – and Coventry’s engineering excellence – saying:
“This move makes sense on many different levels. CPP has been producing our body panels for 10 years and we have an extremely close working relationship with the company.
More than half our components are sourced from the UK, so moving here will bring us considerable efficiency savings which is vital for a car company of our size.
In addition, this area has probably the richest heritage in car production of any region in the world. CPP has shown that the tradition of quality is very much alive and well in the Midlands region and in Coventry in particular, and that can only bring benefits to us.
Coventry has been at the forefront of quality automotive design and production and Spyker wants to be a lasting part of that. We are already starting to establish links with the two universities in the city. This marks a new and very exciting era for Spyker.”
The day ended with Brendan O’Toole and his team taking the Spyker boys out for a tour of Coventry. Whether Coventry offered quite the delights of a night out in Amsterdam we’re not sure, but apparently a good time was had by all.
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