Most terms that help to identify the various types of cars, such as spider, curiously, they predate the automobile itself — yes, they arose back in the days of horse-drawn carriages.
At that time, sec. Eighteenth-nineteenth, one of the various types of carriages was called Phaeton—yes, the same name as Volkswagen's top-of-the-range, but with an entirely different meaning. It was an open carriage, pulled by one or two horses, light, with no permanent protection from the elements, and with quite large wheels.
One of the Phaeton sub-types, the Phaeton Spider, had a smaller bodywork, but kept the wheels large, and stood out for its lightness, speed and agility. It was their builders who gave them the name Spider, as their morphology — large multi-spoke wheels and small body — ended up resembling that of a spider.
With the arrival of the automobile, many of the bodybuilders started to make bodywork for automobiles, and, naturally, the same vocabulary ended up being applied. So, to describe a light car without a hood, with a focus on agility and performance, the term Spider fit like a glove.
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