Last post Enthusiast lounges

[Reddingius]

Guys (and girls),

As you may or may not know, our ex-fellow forum member AX Lover has been banned for life from this message board, for the simple reason that he spoke his mind. Apparently, his opinion got a little too close to the truth for Spyker's liking. Previously he had been warned not to citisize Spyker, this time he had to pay the price. Clearly, this is absurd. There is a freedom of speach and critisism is defenitely part of that. Most forums state that you can't bully or disrespect other persons but AX did not bully nor desrespect a person, he spoke sceptically of a company. He didn't set out to bring Spyker down, otherwise he wouldn't even be a forum member. Anyway, I do not want to be a part of this any longer. Like AX, I absolutely adore Spyker and the cars they produce, no question about that. But, again like AX, there are some things that don't seem quite right to me. I like to give Spyker the benefit of the doubt for as long as possible ("Surely next year they'll make a profit, just you wait and see!") but I do want to be able to question and investigate and to bring out the truth, ugly as it may be.

As the recent turn of events have shown, I won't be allowed to do this. Nor was AX and logically, nor will you be.

The best of luck to Mr. Brown with his Psycho Spyker project. Finallly I'd like to say cheers to Edwardo, Binkje, Bucciali, Wouter and IVR007 for showing they recognise the importance of freedom of critisism.

Peace,

Boris Reddingius.

[IVR007]

what's the reaction of the moderators on this fiasco?

[F Spider]

OK guys, I axed AX. This is not something that I take lightly, but I asked him in the last 10 months several times on the board and many times in PM's to stick to the facts.

I've never deleted any of his opinions, just asked him to not to hammer on his (erroneous) conclusions. From an enthusiastic member of this Spyker Fan site he became more and more negative about Spyker. And not only on SpykerOwner. Ax really took it all out on the Dutch Trading site: DePers - maandag 26 oktober 2009

On friday I asked him in a PM not to change his opinion, but to word them different, and he flatly refused in his PM to me: "Rijk, Aanpassen, daar begin ik niet aan. Sorry."

Right after that he proceeded to post, claiming that Spyker has stil 40 unsold cars in the factory....... I just had enough and asked Hans to cancel his membership of SpykerOwner.

[markbrown]

uhh i too have been kicked off many forums in the past. i think anyone who is of a certain personality like myself just expects it. anyone can see that the company looks shaky indeed. but i trade the markets for a living and the reason i am so excited about spyker right now is:

1.)the new cars are really on target with style and adding an automatic.
2.)the company has proven it can race and that is very valuable to me.
3.)the stock price is at a great buy for myself, i am a bottom feeder!
4.)the spyker cars look to me to be the best they have ever been maybe?

so sorry about what has happened but that is to be expected on any forum - this one is no exception. on the corvette forum i would have already been kicked off for wanting a fast car. they are so idiotic prudent over there since all the mods are cops, military and security types with napoleon syndrome.

mark brown

[Swisstrader]

Sheesh!...and here I thought I was joining a forum to trade stories and knowledge about my beloved Spyker, not a cyber soap opera. In my view, differences of opinion are part of what makes the world go round and even if a poster posts erroneous or non-factual data or is overly negative, another poster can challenge that information and if its done in a respectful manner, we can all learn from the exchange.

In the short timeframe I've been on this forum and in reviewing his history, I believe AX provided some useful information and I love hearing a contrarian view even if the facts are sometimes a bit off. If we start banning members, we'll end up with a Big Brother mentality here, which I'm wildly against and goes against all of what I believe in.

Now can we go back to discussing cars??!!...p.s. had a terrific weekend driving and getting to know 086 in NJ and NY this weekend...an absolute blast!...the only thing I can't get used to is the number of people pointing at me and checking me out (or is it the car)

[OnTheLam]

Swisstrader, glad to hear you are enjoying 086!

The history of all the great sports car companies is bumpy indeed. They survive long enough, keep making great cars, and they get respectable. Racing Le Mans doesn't hurt either.

I hope the mods will be tolerant of open discussion here. Failure to do so will truncate the usefulness of this site to its users, prompting them to look elsewhere.

Justice

[SpykerOwner]

.. I hope the mods will be tolerant of open discussion here...

We are. That's why we haven't edited AX Lover's posts. It was a hard decision to part from him because in the first year he was a real asset to the site and a true Spyker fan.

But this year he really changed and he was only looking to axe any statement Spyker made. And that is not what a fan does. A true fan loves the brand, ventilates his opinion (even when it is is not always in favour of the brand). And ventilating an opinion is not the same as criticizing every Spyker statement.

[binkje]

OK guys, I axed AX. This is not something that I take lightly, but I asked him in the last 10 months several times on the board and many times in PM's to stick to the facts.

I've never deleted any of his opinions, just asked him to not to hammer on his (erroneous) conclusions. From an enthusiastic member of this Spyker Fan site he became more and more negative about Spyker. And not only on SpykerOwner. Ax really took it all out on the Dutch Trading site: DePers - maandag 26 oktober 2009

On friday I asked him in a PM not to change his opinion, but to word them different, and he flatly refused in his PM to me: "Rijk, Aanpassen, daar begin ik niet aan. Sorry."

Right after that he proceeded to post, claiming that Spyker has stil 40 unsold cars in the factory....... I just had enough and asked Hans to cancel his membership of SpykerOwner.

What erroneous conclusions are you talking about? This number of 40 cars in stock is coming from an official Spyker publication! Also if you took the time to have a look at their annual reports you would notice a gap of 70 cars between build and sold. Of course some of them were used for crash tests, racing and prototypes, but the remainder is in stock. This is also the result of some buy backs from dealers, the rest are new unsold cars.

So you banned him from this forum for quoting official, audited Spyker numbers. I thought this thread was about Spyker shares and his comments seem rather relevant to me. Also in this perspective his questions about the vague trading update are fair. Not mentioning the number of produced cars makes you wonder...

[F Spider]

What erroneous conclusions are you talking about? This number of 40 cars in stock is coming from an official Spyker publication! Also if you took the time to have a look at their annual reports you would notice a gap of 70 cars between build and sold. Of course some of them were used for crash tests, racing and prototypes, but the remainder is in stock. This is also the result of some buy backs from dealers, the rest are new unsold cars.

So you banned him from this forum for quoting official, audited Spyker numbers. I thought this thread was about Spyker shares and his comments seem rather relevant to me. Also in this perspective his questions about the vague trading update are fair. Not mentioning the number of produced cars makes you wonder...

Ax can come back if he changes the way he writes about the sharp deductions he makes from the text.

If he notices that the report said "sold and delivered" and they let out the word "build", there IS a question to be asked on SpykerOwner. We would never be in the way of that. But to strongly insinuate that it is "0" is negative.

If AX would have changed it into: "they omitted the word build, so there are probably less cars build than sold and delivered. Does anyone know how much cars they actually build?" But AX refused to reword his post.

The same with the discrepancy of 40 (or as you say 70) Vin Numbers that are unaccounted for. Of course this is a question that needs to be posted on SpykerOwner. AX bluntly stated that Spyker is hiding 40 cars at the factory, and that conclusion is erroneous. If AX would have changed it in: "I have found a 40 car discrepancy in the production numbers. Can we see if we can fill the gap?" But AX refused to reword his post.

The post would go from Statement and Opinion to zooming in on the facts. Many people here on the board have excellent information. It would be interesting and fun to see if we can close the gap.

One example of what I know is that Spyker stopped the SWB in the low 240's and started the first Aileron prototype with 250. We also know that the first costumer Aileron will be #259. A gap of more than 10 cars explained

[binkje]

You don't have to tell me, let's stick to the facts. Facts that can be found on page 106 of the 2008 annual report, 14 Inventories.

Spyker has 42 cars in stock. Some new, but also they bought 17!!! cars from dealers. So looking at 2008 for example. Spyker claims to have build 43 cars, but 13 were so called rebuilds. So the total of new cars was only 30.

The stock level at January 1 was 31 cars.

They purchased 17 cars (trade-in), sold 37, and 1 racing car was added to the stock. So year end Spyker had 42 cars in stock, 11 more than the balance at January 1.

So all in all you can say that despite claiming to have build 43 and selling 37 cars the inventory still went up with 11 cars...

Now coming back to AX Lovers point on the production number. This is very relevant since Spyker has a lot of cars in stock. When Spyker gives an update you would like to know if its a rebuild, how many new build, how many they trade-in (cars being sold to shareholders, like Mr. Antonov who has bought 3 Ailerons, they will probably be bought back by Spyker!) and how many they actually sell.

The trading update didnt give that information. So AX Lovers question on production numbers is a very valid one. Because it makes you wonder if they weren't selling used cars and not new ones. Since that thread was about Spyker shares i feel he did the right thing in bringing this to the surface.

[binkje]

Maybe it's a good idea that you go ask your friend Mr. Muller where he's hiding all these cars? And i hope we all get an invitation to go see them!