Spyker moves production from the Netherlands to Coventry

The Dutch maker of luxury sports cars, Spyker, has said that it will shift final assembly of its vehicles to one of its main suppliers, CPP (Manufacturing) Ltd UK, in Coventry. Spyker cited cost-saving as the main motivation for the move; about half of the parts used in its cars originate in Britain. Today's Spyker is a post-2000 revival of the original company of the same name, which traded between 1875 and 1925. CPP built the first prototype chassis for the modern Spyker cars.

Spyker's move provides further evidence that while the UK industry has lost some high-volume car plants in the last few years it retains a strong position in the low-volume/high-tech end of the business and continues to be a magnet for prestige manufacturers and motor sport operations.

UK car fans know the heartache of seeing production of British motoring icons being shifted to foreign factories; VW made Bentley Continentals in Dresden for a while and it is planned to make some future Minis and the Aston Martin Rapide saloon abroad too. But every now and then, the boot is on the other foot; besides the Dutch Spyker, production of the famous Pinzgauer off-roader, the pride of Austria, was shifted to the UK a few years ago, in part because Britain's armed forces acquired a strong appetite for the thing late in its production life.