The Spyker 60 HP racing car, probably built in 1902, but presented in 1903, was the world's first petrol-fuelled four-wheel drive car.[1]
Known as "the car of three firsts",[2] with a top speed of 80 mph (129 km/h) to 90 mph,[2] it was manufactured by the Dutch carriage and automobile maker Spyker, set up in 1880 by blacksmiths Jacobus and Hendrik-Jan Spijker, and also featured the first application of a six-cylinder engine[3] (an 8.8-litre inline design),[4] (straight-six engine)[5] as well as the first four-wheel braking system.[6]
The 60 HP was commissioned by Jacobus Spijker for the 1903 Paris–Madrid race[3] (although Bill Boddy, in a 1995 article for Motor Sport, states the Gordon Bennett race,[7] the fore-runner of the Grand Prix that would be staged at Le Mans in 1906). The Belgian engineer Joseph Valentin Laviolette already had a design for an engine with six separate cylinders,[3] and he designed a transmission that drove the front as well as the rear wheels,[3] by extending the cardan-shaft from the gearbox extend forward,[7] as well as fitting a transmission brake.[3]
However, the car was not ready in time for the race in May and was not launched until December 1903, in Paris,[3] going on display two months later at The Crystal Palace in London.[3]
The Spyker 60 HP racing car only raced twice; at Blackpool, in 1904, where it finished third, and at Birmingham, in 1906, where it won.[8]
The model on show at the Louwman Museum, in The Hague, Netherlands, was acquired in 1993 after having been housed at various Dutch museums. It was restored over a five-year period to its original condition as displayed at The Crystal Palace in 1904.[9]