At Donkervoort, Sports Cars Are A Family Business: Interview

We all have an idea of what a family business looks like—usually a restaurant or a tiny shop. Very sweet, very, ‘oh, that store’s been in town for generations.’ Donkervoort isn’t that sort of business: it builds fast cars in small numbers, and it does so incredibly well.

The company was founded by Joop Donkervoort in 1978. In 2021, his son Denis took over operations with plans to take the company in a more extreme, community-driven direction. Ahead of the launch of the P24 RS—the firm’s latest, most extreme car to date—Motor1 sat down with Denis to find out what it’s like taking the reins from your dad, and what the future of Donkervoort might look like.

Denis Donkervoort With The New P24 RS

Photo by: Donkervoort

Donkervoort is a company that very nearly didn’t exist. Founder Joop Donkervoort got the idea to build his own car after officials in the Netherlands struck down his dream of importing the Lotus Seven in the 1970s. Ever since, Donkervoort has been developing cars along loosely similar lines, with a more-recent pivot to enhanced luxury and even higher performance.

In the company’s museum at its Lelystad, Netherlands factory, the original S7 looks very Caterham-y. But as you walk along the lineup, fast-forwarding through Donkervoort history, the cars get bigger, slicker, and more futuristic.

Donkervoort started off with Ford engines before moving to Audi five-cylinders in the 1990s. For the new P24 RS, the firm switched back to Ford—a 3.5-liter V6 with turbo power on top. If you look at the S7 and P24 RS next to one another, you can see the evolution, sure, but Joop’s car is a world away from Denis’s debut.

But Denis didn’t simply walk in and take over from his father after a life elsewhere; he’s been involved for years.

Donkervoort P24 RS

Photo by: Alex Goy | Motor1

“I was 20, and I started in the company. I really started at zero, cleaning floors, washing cars, working as a mechanic.” He was, of course, the leader in waiting, but that doesn’t come without worry: “When you’re up there all alone, it does, of course, feel different, and you feel extra pressure. You don’t want to break the company, which was built over the past 40 years by your parents, right? But again, referring to the period that you are already involved with the company, you know the company well. You know the people. You know your own strengths, your own weaknesses.”

When it came to transferring the company, the father/son pair had incredible trust that reached back over a lifetime.

“I respect the way my father and my parents did it for us [Joop’s children], you know, just stepping aside and not trying to keep a foot in, right? I think because of the fact that we worked so closely together for such a long time, he also had the trust that there could be a chance that we would succeed.”

‘I was 20, and I started in the company. I really started at zero, cleaning floors, washing cars, working as a mechanic.’

Denis took control of the company around the launch of the F22, the last Donkervoort to run Audi’s five-cylinder motor, but he was being set up for the big job during its development. He notes and knowingly appreciates that the two of them are different people, with, toward the end of Joop’s run, different visions for the company’s future.

“His way of doing business was to create his own Donkervoort, right? I’m not an engineer [Joop very much is], I love technology though,” says Denis. “My strengths lie more in the entrepreneurship, commercial, and marketing side as well. If you look at the 15 years I worked with my father—I learned from him. Then there’s the phase where you get your own ideas, your own vision, your own desire to do things differently. You could become a copy, and continue the company the same, but that’s the worst thing you can do. You need to have your own identity and vision, and mine is different from my father’s.”

Under Denis Donkervoort, the company will still build the cars it’s known for, sure, but as he notes, there will be more of a lean toward customer demand. That means knowing them, listening to their feedback more closely, and developing a community. He knows Donkervoort customers are a different breed from the ‘usual’ exotic car crowd.

Photo by: Donkervoort

“You need to be a bit stubborn to decide against all the normal sports cars,” he says, “Don’t get me wrong, those products are perfect and maybe the best you can buy for that amount of money. But if you want to be different, I would say maybe we’re a supercar with hypercar technology.”

Donkervoort’s people are those who want a bit of everything, but want to be a bit different… The P24 RS is proof of that. As Denis’s first ‘solo’ car at the helm of the company, its development was informed, partly, by talking to the people who immerse themselves in the product—especially when it came to giving it so much power.

“The decision was because the customers were asking for it, really.” The F22 comes with silly power and low weight—it’s the Donkervoort way—but if you’re going to get customers to switch up, or add to their collection, you need to offer more.

‘You need to be a bit stubborn to decide against all the normal sports cars.’

Losing Audi’s engine caused something of a dilemma for Denis and his team, though, because it gave them all a choice, but also… not much. Customers didn’t want the company to go to a turbo four (and for the P24 RS’s estimated $350,000 asking price, that might be a tough sell), so the only way was up.

A V8 would have been cool, says Denis, but too heavy and an emissions nightmare. And after a previous, deeply unpopular dalliance with a V6 way back, the company was hesitant to go back. Customers seem happy with the Ford V under the hood, though, as more than 50 have already been sold ahead of launch.

Going forward, Donkvervoort has plenty of time before the P24 RS’s production run ends, so ‘the next one’ isn’t a massive concern. Of course, the question of hybridization needed to be asked.

Photo by: Alex Goy | Motor1

“If there is a regulation that makes it mandatory, then there’s no other option, but then at least we are still Donkervoort—we’d need to bring it back to our DNA and think about how we could convert it into something our target audience is interested in,” says Denis.

It’s not looking like that’ll have to happen for a long while yet.

The P24 RS marks the start of the Denis Donkervoort cars, but he’s reverent of what came before—rather acutely, in fact. “We once did an analysis about the average life cycle of a sports car, and then a Donkervoort. We discovered that 97 percent of all our cars still exist—we’re in direct contact with the owners,” Denis says with justifiable pride. “I’d say 97 percent is a good number, but we realized that there’s a high probability that a car will exist for a century or more.”

Photo by: Alex Goy | Motor1

It seems that he hopes the company will last far longer than that 100-year mark, long beyond his tenure. He mentions the Patek Philippe slogan, “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation,” and wistfully hopes that will become something of a Donkervoort thing too.

He’s noticed the signs of it already. Denis knows of cars that have passed from parent to child and are being enjoyed, loaded with memories of past adventures soaked into their chassis. It’s the sort of legacy you hear about with other brands, but rarely do you see the joy it brings the person with their name stamped on the hood.

Following in your father’s footsteps is a noble thing to do, but taking over his company, balancing what’s been before, and what might come next? That’s a massive undertaking. Denis Donkervoort has a huge job to do, but it’s one he seems to be relishing.