My dad has a saying for certain businesses seem to exist in spite of extraordinary evidence that deems it should fail. I feel like he's said it my entire life.

"It's a front for the mob," he says.

For him, it explains everything: The French restaurant near Harvard Square that was eternally empty; the sporting goods store that never changed its display window; the barbershop that was never open.

Fronts for the mob.

He says it with a hearty laugh-because mob involvement is so obvious, it's funny. No, it doesn't make sense. But now I do it, laugh and all.

I tell people that the bakery in our neighborhood is a front for the mob because it doesn't open until noon and hasn't changed its window display in the two years we've lived here. This drives my wife batty because it's yet another declarative statement that I can't back up with hard facts, like cheddar cheese gives me zits.

So maybe that's why I get suspicious when I see a company like Spyker Cars pony up over $100 million and waltz into Formula 1. (Hiring ex-Toyota technical director Mike Gascoyne couldn't have been cheap, either.)

I know they have backers in the Middle East, and the Netherlands owns over half of the United States, but still-my mob radar goes off. Not that I'm insinuating mafia ties, but something sure doesn't quite add up.

Me? Paranoid? Probably. You're looking at a guy who used to seriously suspect his uncle was an operative for the FBI. But last I heard, Spyker sells fewer than 100 cars a year and is barely in the black. The highest level of racing it's done is a couple of GT2 cars (or its "Spyker Squadron") at Le Mans. Its newly placed director of F1 operations makes games for cell phones.

Not that Spyker can't overcome these issues. On paper, Frank Williams is just a grumpy old man, leftover from another era.

I don't buy the marketing angle. After all, what is Spyker marketing? They don't build bespoke engines, and fending off Super Aguri at the back of the pack isn't the kind of marketing strategy that produces a favorable ROI-though Midland's chairman, Alex Shnaider, managed to parlay that to $60 million more than what he paid for the team less than two years ago.

(Speaking of Shnaider, the Midland Group was actually much more suspicious when it bought out Eddie Jordan in 2005. A Ukranian steel company? Multiple business concerns in Eastern Europe? C'mon. What good reason did Midland have for being in F1? If you were to believe the company web site, its goal was "striving to be the front-runner among F1 teams when it comes to exploring emerging markets and business opportunities." But I guess it all depends on how you define "business opportunities".)

Anyway, it's always great seeing new teams come into Formula 1, and the guys at Spyker will be an exciting addition. They're young. They seem to have the right attitude, not to mention the cash flow to front a relatively competitive team. I wish them all the success in the world. And I'm not just saying that because I don't want to get an unwanted visit in the middle of night.

Richard Chang can be reached at rich@urbanracer.com. Fumes appears the first and third Tuesday of every month.