Spyker is a Dutch manufacturer whose name dates back to the late 19th century. The company was re-launched in 2000 building high performance sports cars. Involvement in motorsport was almost inevitable, including perhaps the most famous sports car race of all, the Le Mans 24 hour race.

ProtoSlot have responded to enthusiasts' calls for a model of the Spyker, bringing us the Spyker C8 GT2R which competed at Le Mans in 2005. It's a resin kit, available in plain or pre-painted form. The kit contains the body, interior, driver, vac-formed glazing, decals, photo-etched detail parts and resin wheels inserts.

ProtoSlot have a reputation for good quality kits and the Spyker is no exception. I bought the unpainted kit, which required very little clean up before painting. The interior tub needed a tiny amount of trimming at the back to get a nice snug fit, but that was all (the front of the tub locates positively into cut outs in the body which is a big help). The interior is nicely detailed and the driver figure is excellent.

The kit is designed to take a Slot.It HRS chassis and Slot.It large (17mm) wheels. Ninco ProRace wheels (17mm or 18mm) are also an option, but Ninco use a different axle diameter, so they won't work with the HRS chassis. To make it slightly more complicated, the wheel inserts are sized for the Ninco 18mm wheels, so they will need to be turned down - carefully! They are quite fragile.

The HRS chassis needs some slight modifications to fit properly. The rear of the chassis needs to be shortened to clear the rear diffuser. Depending on which wheels you use, you may need to narrow the front axle holder too. But these are minor things which should only take a few minutes. Before assembly, do a dry run with the interior in place, just to see how it all fits together.

I cut the chassis legs fairly short - I didn't want to risk cracking the body by stretching it too much. This shouldn't lead to the body moving on the chassis though, the interior tub has lugs along its base to locate the chassis. One of the lugs on mine needed a slight trim.

Assembly work is minimal, but delicate. 

You need to assemble and paint the interior (including instrument decals), fit the rear diffuser, glazing, parts of the roll cage, side air scoops, mirrors and rear wing. The wing end plates and mount are photo-etch parts, as are the reflective surfaces of the mirrors. More photo-etch parts are provided for tow hooks, body latches, front grill, fuel fillers and tiny, beautiful Spyker badges front and rear. 

I gave up on the resin wheel inserts and used Ninco multi-spoke inserts instead (Ninco ProRace part number 80733) which fit perfectly in the Slot.It wheels.

The decal sheet looks a little intimidating - there are a lot of them! The large Spyker decals on the sides and the orange sections for the front need some careful handling. Micro-sol or some other type of decal softener is an absolute must.

ProtoSlot supply some reference pictures with the kit, but there are some differences between the decals supplied and the reference pics, especially the Spyker decal on the driver's side. Fortunately, ProtoSlot have also set up a very good reference web page, take a look here - Spyker reference page  

It's worth the work though, the car looks stunning...

The Slot.It chassis means that good performance is almost guaranteed, though a lot will depend on your choice of motor, gear ratio and tyres. I used a 25k rpm motor, 12:36 gears, Slot.It P3 rear tyres and zero-grip fronts.

Despite being a little heavier than most ready to run cars, the Spyker goes very well indeed on my routed track. Acceleration and braking are sharp, with good overall speed. It's wide and low, and most of the weight seems to be low down in the car, so if you over-do things it tends to spin rather than roll.

It feels like an easy car to drive fast, it seems stable and firmly planted on the track. Most of all it feels smooth, progressive and predictable. I'm enjoying it a lot!!

At £45 for a painted kit (£40 for the unpainted version) plus the cost of chassis etc. this is not a cheap car. 

But ProtoSlot are the only slotcar manufacturer currently offering the Spyker. The kit is very high quality and builds into a super-looking car, and using Slot.It bits gives the Spyker performance to match its looks.

Value for money? That's your decision. But there's nothing I wish I'd bought instead...

Bigger pics in the Gallery