And for some strange reason, you always, inexplicably, have enough time to get ready to appreciate it when you do see it! Seriously, happens every time!
I'm from England so quite often see TVRs at car shows and meets and now and again on the road, I have always loved them, they are known for being fast, loud and not having any driver aids. Some people say they were built badly but as far as I'm concerned they aren't much worse than any other low production, hand made vehicles of their time. I plan on selling my project MX5 and my Lexus LS400 and getting a TVR soon, Id like a Chimaera but will settle for a 350i wedge. Also that purple one is is not a full Cerbera speed 12, It does share many parts with the original however it doesn't have the TVR engine. The red one is the only fully built TVR Cerbera Speed 12 that made it out to the public, it sold at auction earlier this year for a little over £600000
@@B.404MIt's only the right side of the road if you are left handed, for a right hander, the left side of the road makes more sense as your right hand is always on the steering wheel. What other left handed tools are right handers forced to fumble with in the EU?
The speed 12 was the most powerful super car out there until Bugatti launched the Veyron. All TVRs are pretty nuts but the speed 12 was reallly really nuts!
"the most powerful super car" No, Lotec C 1000 was earlier and had more power, 1000 hp. And it is more rare, 1 vs 3 built. I don't know if it even makes sense top compare cars that are more or less unicums with cars that a made in small series like for example the McLaren F1 which had 78 cars legal for the road. 69 McLaren F1, 6 McLaren F1 LM and 3 McLaren F1 GT, the Bugatti Veyron was limited to 450 cars. From the normal Cerbera they build about 1.500.
@@robhills2613 actually that was one of TVRs good financial times, the Wheeler era was peak TVR goodness.. Although the Scamander would definitely be seen by most as bonkers.
TVR is bonkers, and that's great if you are too. A friend of mine bought a Griffith V8 because he knew he wouldn't make it to 35 if he kept riding motorcycles. As many as their older designs the Griffith looks like a sophisticated stylish little cabriolet, it's not, it's bonkers. Dont let their hubris to build their own brilliant but flawed straigh-6 and this double 6 fool you, this TreVoR guy was building low budget supercars from a shed, with tubes, fiber glass, Rover engines, Opel Vectra rear light units turned upside down and made highly unusual designs out of it. TVR was probably the first to use LED lights because that was much easier and cheaper with a shed build. Bonkers by concept.
I studied at Bispham College for Auto Engineering, just down the road from where TVR were built, in blackpool, where Jaguar first started. They used the main road near the college for speed tests and my best mate at the time, his brother was a TVR mechanic. Glorious days to hear them first, then see them second.
Cerbera is the Latin version of the Greek, Cerberus. The mythological three headed dog at the gates of Hades. And you're right, the car is also a beast. A friend of mine had a TVR Tuscan which he took out onto the autobahns whilst stationed in Germany. It gave many a Porsche driver a surprise! A bit "Hairy" when high speed cornering though.
TVRs in general tend to do this, as far as I understand: 1. Give the driver a big thrill. 2. Scare the driver to death. 3. Break down a little, and shed a couple of parts.
TVRs were always mad, even back in the kitcar days, but when the 90's hit they started going properly nuts. Always loved the Tuscan myself, both seeing them IRL and driving them in Test Drive Unlimited.
You know how difficult it was to control the Speed 12 in GT2? Bloody hell it was insanely fast and roared. In GT3 it looked the same as it does here, but more controllable.
@@Marc-so2cd Yes in GT3 it was more easier to drive but I don´t know why, that uncontrollable behaviour in GT2 was more fun. I liked the challenge to control that Beast.
The incredible TVR Speed 12. One of my favourite cars of all time. Apart from the Dodge Viper RT/10 and the McLaren F1, which are two of my favourite cars of all time. Along with the Ford GT40 and the Mini Cooper.... As well as the Lotus 49 and Lotus 79 too. And of course the Audi Quattaro and Lancia 037 & the Subaru Impreza.
TVR are now being sold in the US as vintage collectors cars. There is a firm run by a British guy specialising in importing them and registering the car as road legal.
Even the standard TVR Cerbera was special to see back in the day. Jay Leno has an episode about them where they talk about it and the company in quite a bit of detail. Worth a watch.
I remember watching Peter Wheeler (TVR Chairman ) racing in the British TVR Tuscan Championship at Knockhill. It must be cool to race one of your own cars
There are lots of colourful stories about the history of TVR. They were all handbuilt, so plenty of stories about how the employees would leave little messages for each other on assorted panels. So if you lift the carpeting out the way, owners may still find things like "Robbo is a c***" written somewhere. I also recall hearing a story about how company owner Peter Wheeler's dog helped style the front lights on the TVR Chimaera by taking a chomp out of the clay model. On "Classic" Top Gear (before Clarkson, Hammond and May revived their legendary reboot of it), they did a "TVR Special" episode.
In my late teens I saw a Cerbera tuned up with a body kit outside a shop at the top of our street, the paint on these were pearlescant (at least as far as I know) and when you see it combined with the bodywork it's really quite a sight, it's really a unique car. Then the owner came out of the shop and fired it up...the sound makes the hair on your balls stand on end.
My (only car) daily driver is a TVR Cerbera in the same ruby red colour and front light set up. It's a '97 but I swapped the engine (original 4.2 I still have) for a LS3 (500bhp). The car is 1250KG or 2755lbs. It's brutal and gorgeous and a total femme fatale diva to own and drive since I bought it in 2006.
I had the standard TVR Cerbera road car, 4.2L v8, exactly the same colour as the Cerbera in Jeremy Clarkson's Supercar drag race, no spoilers, but that's one to check out.
@@bennyhannover9361 TVR's own AJP8 flat plane crank V8 in the Cerbera in 4.2 and 4.5L versions. The TVR Speed Six straight 6 engine was added to the Cerbera lineup after it had first appeared in the Tuscan. Only the Cerbera used the AJP8, the Chimaera and Griffith (I had both of these as well at different times) used the Rover V8 engine in 4.0, 4.3, 4.5 and 5 litre versions.
Weird to me that you go straight to the advanced prototype rather than the production Cerbera V8. A phenomenal vehicle that is the most fun I will ever have on 4 wheels and it was street legal for less than £50,000. Amazing value for the novel engineering, inventiveness, brutality and sheer class.
a few hundred? There are a LOT more TVRs on the road than a few hundred; most models they produced a couple of thousand.....I mean there are still hundreds of Cerberas on the road (still only one speed 12 though)
@@bennyhannover9361 Not anything to do with the Rover V8, as for starters it's a 75 degree bank angle ! Was designed by Motorsport Engineer AJ Melling !!
I’m 48 (is that old), I recall my childhood when TVR’s were looked at as a step up from a kit car, on the mid 90’s and early 2000’s when they became a genuine performance brand. A shame we don’t see many around.
you have to give him props for pulling pin, recognising the significance of the power in the wrong hands, especially after all the money that they put in!!
If I remember right there's 2 cerbera's. The red one is factory made and the purple one was build with the spare parts from the red one by the previous owner, who owned both cars until a couple of years ago. He then sold the red one, i think, and hold on to the purple one...
TVR is from my hometown of Blackpool, and I lived on the road where TVR 1st started back in the 80's. I've actually sat in this very car, too. Real shame what happened to TVR, we lost something very special there. Also, the end of TVR had a huge impact on many peoples lives as everyone in Blackpool knew someone that worked there.
TVR was all over the first few Gran Turismo games. Not just this car, but many of their models. All had their own distinctive design, and they were ALL a handful (a very wild, but fun and FAST handful) to drive. If you could make one behave, you had a monster in your stable.
The TVR speed 12 was built for FIA's GT1 racing class to go against Ferrari, McLaren and Porsche. It was a homologation special, like all the GT1 class cars were. All of the GT1 racing cars were extreme cars that barely resembled a street car on the outside with custom chassis and suspension on the inside, and sometimes engines not native to the road cars they resembled. In fact GT1 cars became closer to closed cockpit prototypes at the end (excluding the Dauer 962 which was the Porsche group c car converted into a barely road legal gt when the class was introduced.) The Cerbera speed 12 started out as project 7/12. A tube frame racing car that had a V12 made from 2 TVR Speed 6 (inline) engines and it was made out of steel. Not aluminum or iron, but steel. The car later got the body from the new (at the time) Cerbera road car, hence the name. A bunch of those performance figures are estimated as there wasn't a way to test the car's full potential safely at the time. In fact, the road car was later fitted with the racing car's body kit just so the car would have some down force for added control, it was a safety measure. The increased cornering performance was an added bonus. Mind you standard TVR's were already considered crazy cars that had no abs, and some without traction control and airbags. They were purist sports cars. The guy in charge at the time thought those cars were safe to sell to people, which should tell you how crazy the speed 12 is. Some ex-employees are trying to make a new one with a twin turbo V12.
Always loved TVR's and the unorthodox way that they were ran which was completely mad, reminds me of the story of the TVR boss Peter Wheeler’s German Pointer taking a bite out of the polystyrene styling model for the Chimaera, and rather than fixing the mould this then becoming part of the final design for font fog/indicator recess! Crazy!
They made 2 Speed 12's before deciding they were too dangerous for the public. They carried on producing lower powered Cerbera (ruclips.net/video/V6nQjYhigzo/видео.html) such as the Speed 6 until 2006. Currently there are 436 TVR CERBERA left in the UK with an MOT. Take a look at the TVR Griffeth 500 for a nice sedate everyday driver.
Nice to hear you pronouncing the Cerbera properly. Never really been into TVR's myself, the build quality is a little pants. The body panels can flap around at higher speeds for starters.
The Griffith V8's are always a hoot in the Historic/Classic sports car races, some with single Exhaust trumpet angled upwards at rear belching flames like a flame thrower.
I remember the prototype being featured in Auto Express back in the late 90s. At the time I seem to remember it was just the TVR speed 12. You looked at it and couldn't take it all in. Utterly stunning. Ian look up the prototype, it looks even more menacing!
Ive seen this car in the flesh at the time it was at the Lakeland museum. I think its still there. Its displayed near the the entrance door for the cars to come in and out of the museum because the owner does sometime come along to take it out for a spin. Its a crazy design to see up close. For me the highlight of the museum as I had no idea it was going to be there.
The other cars around the 3 minute mark are all TVRs, the Silver one is the Speed 6, the little brother of this car which actually went into production. They're gorgeous and had one of the most brutal straight 6 engines ever put into production. There is only one legit Speed 12 out there, but there is another that was assembled by enthusiasts from leftover parts and a highly modified Jaguar V12 after TVR folded. The red one in the handheld video is the same one from the Goodwood footage, the other one was purple last time I saw anything on it. TVR were putting race tech into their cars in the 90s. They are fast even by today's standards with zero driving aids.
I always loved the looks and sound of TVR's but never got a chance to own one. They are still for sale although they are not making new ones. The standard version of the Cerbera was a 4.0 litre didn't have the skirts but was still a nuts car and was one of my favourites from TVR. The bodies were all fibreglass so all were lightweight with big engineers. Although they are not common you can pick up a good version of the standard car for about £30K and they still look amazing. They also had some very unique colours 🙂I think the last model they build was the Sagaris which was another amazing car to see and hear.
Such underrated brand, so many great cars under their name, but with little support behind it, my favs are the Griffith and the Tuscan, and they really are what I love about a sports car, raw power, under a small, lightweight chassi, and the Speed 12 is that idea pushed to the max, I really wish they would bring back the Griffith like they promised to, this is a brand that I would hate to see it gone.
It was a sad day when TVR closed. They occupied a similar niche to early Lotus, somewhere between kit cars and exotics. Morgan are still going and until recently were still family owned. Alex Roy has done loads of videos of his Morgan 3 Wheeler. He seemed to fall in love with the car as soon as he drove it. I’m not enamoured of the new version as it would look silly with a Lewis machine gun for the passenger. Whereas that would blend in perfectly on the older model.
There’s a video on the Drivetribe channel that explains the history of this car and where it is now, including the second purple car which I think was built from spares.
TVR Tuscan R is such a gorgeous ride too. They knew how to design...some stuff. Not battery positioning though. Dodge Avenger seems to have it inside the front fender right in front of the driver's side front wheel, but not like some TVR's, behind the front wheel and upside down with terminals out in the open :D
TVR are my favourite car manufacturer. Dad had an S2 when I was little. Awesome machines, look & sound wild. Not the most reliable cars ever but still awesome cars.
There is technically 2 in existence. 1 Red, 1 Purple. However one one is a genuine TVR vehicle. The Red one. The purple one was built using genuine parts by someone I believe worked at TVR. The purple one is a slightly tamer version of the red lunatic. (but is still a riot) The red one recently sold at an automotive auction house for alot of money. The road car became the race car. I also believe it had a go at LeMans. One of the early Gran Turismo games featured a "Cadbury Purple" Speed12 concept car with slightly different features. In the videos you were watching at the beginning of the video, see the standard Cerbera (in yellow) following the Cerbera Speed12 to see a comparison between the two. I believe the Silver one was just one of the 2 resprayed. Also fun fact - the same british guy owned both up until recently.
Seen this beast in person at the old Blackpool Garage. i even have the model. my favourite car of all time. also, Jeremy Clarkson had the TVR Speed 12 ( Not Cerbera Speed 12 ) on one of his 90’s shows, a white one. completely insane, so insane he didn’t even drive it. haha
car was recently sold at auction, very good video about it. car got cancelled when the company owner took it home and was like, nope, this is too crazy.
I own a tuned TVR Griffith 500. It's a 5.0ltr V8 and mines dynod at 360bhp.. It goes like a rocket! Just the engine idling puts a smile on my face. Yep, it's only just over 1000kgs (2200lbs).
Door handle is a little button underneath the wing mirror on other TVRs but that doesn't look like standard mirrors, they didn't want standard door handles spoiling the look of the car lol. Fun fact, top gear put members of the public in a TVR and offered them cash if they could get out but none could find the door handle inside either - it's an aluminium dial in the centre behind the handbrake that you twist in the direction of the door you want to open
Defo look into more TVR cars, sagaris, chimera, Cerberus, Tuscan, Griffith, and also some older classics .. the design features are awesome always loved a trip to Blackpool where they used to be made… keep the videos coming. 👍
TVR can be something really special to experience. Most of their models like the Griffith look like they are still in the 50s/60s. But in the late 90s they got more experimental with the Tuscan Speed 6 and Cerbera leading to the Sagaris. The Speed 6 did get some movie time in the John Travolta movie Swordfish.
My most memorable experience of one was aural. Walking to work one day and hearing automotive thunder. An engine note I couldn't place and then saw this TVR pull out of a gated home. It actually made my chest vibrate with the engine sound. The way I had only known at Air shows when iconic craft like the Spitfire flew past.
tvr is one of the few brands that was feared not only by who got to drive their cars, but by the founder as well, especially the sagaris and cerbera, putting 700 horsepower in a tube frame steel chassis with some sort of fiberglass body weighting just over 1,2 tons is W I L D
This car was available in the video game Gran Turismo 2. And it was insane to drive. The real ones that were made were used in racing. However only one still exists and looks slightly different from the one that still exists. The factory in Blackpool which all TVR's were made has now been demolished. And the company has not recovered from its sale in the mid 2000's
1000hp in the 90’s is wild. 1000hp in the 90’s Naturally Aspirated is insane. Got to love a widow maker. 😬 Take a look at the TVR Sagaris when you get time. 👍🏼
There was a TVR dealers near me growing up and i used to go there every month and sit in all the cars, Most the electrical stuff on a TVR is from various Ford's, fiesta, escort etc. Same with the lights the rear tails are from a fiesta lol.
That's one sweet machine. I agree with the remark below. When you meet them on the road you hear them before you see them. Next thing you know you're looking at its rear end. The intakes either side of the radiator direct air at the brake discs. 1000Kg is about a ton (actually a shade under). I dread to think what the insurance costs. The on road footage appears to be around central London. Compared to this any Porsche is a baby.
There are several TVR's that drive around my local area, we have a high density of supercars and luxury vehicles here so I'd imagine I see more than other parts of the UK but you can tell the sound a mile off, I often try to guess which cars are coming along the road that is parallel with my house.
In the International Motor Show in Germany 1984 I saw (and sat) in a car called the Vector Twin Turbo W2. The later W8 version was featured in the movie Rising Sun from 1993 with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. Maybe you like it 🏎️.
TVR was first made in a small garage in Blackpool and went on to have a big factory in Blackpool and was famous for being in the film swordfish with john Travolta hugh jackman and hali berry
You should check out the Zenvo TSR-GT!! A Danish hypercar. Completely handmade. 1360 horsepower, 5,8 litre V8, active aero (turning wing) and 0-60 in 2,8 seconds 🔥🔥 And a LIMITED top speed of 263 mph (424 kmh) 😲
TVR at the time, when this insane car was put out, had some bizarre liveries. I'd even call it "chameleon paint" because it changes colors as you're sitting there. (Thank you Grand Turismo 5 for introducing me to this brand, and the info I've shown)
The guy who owns it, was selling it recently....he had spare parts so built another one. Apparently someone else built one so technically there's 3. The standard cebera speed 8 was ludicrously fast for its time with an in house built v8 based on current f1 engine designs. (90s) There's also a tvr typhon for sale atm which is a one off homologation special of their gt race car, bit like a Tvr tuscan with a fastback, t400 and t440 I think we're made. Check out the lister storm
Legendary car in British sport car/TVR circles… I’ve owned a few Trevor’s, my first was a Wedge shaped (pop up headlights) 350i, I then had 2 x Wedge 400SE, followed by a 450 Chimaera…& then my 2 favourite TVRs owned, a Wedge 450 SEAC, and my last TVR, a 420 SEAC… Both cars fairly rare.. My 420 SEAC had a genuine aramid and carbon fibre body. Standard Wedge shaped TVRs were fibreglass.. Awesome cars.. I really should get another 😎
TVR truly was one of the most awesome brands in the 90s and early 00s. They have existed long before that and always where pretty brutal lightweight sports cars. Notoriously unreliable and barely above kitcar level, but when it works, the driving experience is unlike anything else. During the 90s they became increasingly quirky and absolutely bonkers, without taking anything away of the other qualities. Door handles? Who needs those? And cars like the Grifith, Chimaera or Tuscan were already pretty scary with just 300-400 hp, so imagine having a 1000.... Surely worth looking into more. And when you're done with TVR, you might want to have look at Bristol. Not nearly as brutal, but every bit as eccentric....
If you've never played Gran Turismo 2 and 3 then you don't know this car. This car is as much a beast as the Lister Storm V12 that both competed in the British GT class racing in the late 90s and 2000s.
I owned a Cerbera back in 2000. I’m British and don’t own guns, but if I had a gun back then I’d still consider my TVR more dangerous to be anywhere near. I took a girl on a first date and it was so fast she wee’d on my seat. It was fairground fast. TVR stood for the owners name, TreVoR. You are saying the name correctly. No door handles, a button under the wing mirror opened a solenoid latch and you pressed the Cerbera badge on the rear to pop the boot to locate the fuel filler cap.
Back at the turn of the century I saw a lot of TVR's... And by "a lot" I mean, maybe once a month or so... Nowadays I haven't seen one in at least 10 years... The main one I used to see was a Cabriolet with all front lights in a row... Beautiful car! Guess it was a Tuscan speed 6 and a chimaera...
Cerbera was 2+2 coupe with Front mid engine, tube châssis . Engines were made by TVR. AP6 a 6 inline cylinders and 2 V8 AP8. One with 4,2 l and one in 4,5 l. With 22° angle and flat plane. And inline 6 IS thé base of this V12.
Definitely only the one road car built, plus a race cars. I saw the racers in the British GT Championship back in the early 2000s - insanely loud and spectacular, but usually broke down. The road car came up for auction last year, think it didn't sell.
There's a RUclips channel called Drive Tribe that did a video on this car, they was able to find the car and even hear the engine running and in person it's very loud.
The best bit about TVR is the name.
It's the shortened version of the company founders first name.
Trevor ! 😂
That just made me giggle🤣
Everytime I've seen a tvr in the UK I've always heard it before I've seen it. They sound so good
And for some strange reason, you always, inexplicably, have enough time to get ready to appreciate it when you do see it! Seriously, happens every time!
TVR where the first car company to start tuning exhaust sounds, its actually the reason the headers travelled so far forwards before going backwards 😊
I'm from England so quite often see TVRs at car shows and meets and now and again on the road, I have always loved them, they are known for being fast, loud and not having any driver aids. Some people say they were built badly but as far as I'm concerned they aren't much worse than any other low production, hand made vehicles of their time. I plan on selling my project MX5 and my Lexus LS400 and getting a TVR soon, Id like a Chimaera but will settle for a 350i wedge. Also that purple one is is not a full Cerbera speed 12, It does share many parts with the original however it doesn't have the TVR engine. The red one is the only fully built TVR Cerbera Speed 12 that made it out to the public, it sold at auction earlier this year for a little over £600000
Well not in the rest of the EU, at least not in the places were we drive on the right side of the road
Ooh. RIP
@@B.404MIt's only the right side of the road if you are left handed, for a right hander, the left side of the road makes more sense as your right hand is always on the steering wheel. What other left handed tools are right handers forced to fumble with in the EU?
@@wullaballoo2642 still wrong to almost the entire world 🤣.. like the imperial system. But, I meant on the right.
@@B.404Mand almost the entire world is wrong to those that drive on the left.
What is your point?
Every car nut I know smiles and nods when you mention TVR.
The speed 12 was the most powerful super car out there until Bugatti launched the Veyron. All TVRs are pretty nuts but the speed 12 was reallly really nuts!
"the most powerful super car"
No, Lotec C 1000 was earlier and had more power, 1000 hp.
And it is more rare, 1 vs 3 built.
I don't know if it even makes sense top compare cars that are more or less unicums with cars that a made in small series like for example the McLaren F1 which had 78 cars legal for the road. 69 McLaren F1, 6 McLaren F1 LM and 3 McLaren F1 GT, the Bugatti Veyron was limited to 450 cars.
From the normal Cerbera they build about 1.500.
So nuts in fact that it must have been a financial disaster for them.
@@robhills2613 actually that was one of TVRs good financial times, the Wheeler era was peak TVR goodness.. Although the Scamander would definitely be seen by most as bonkers.
@@helloweener2007Only 1 speed 12 in existence now and it was naturally aspirated compared to the c1000.
The Bugatti was twice the weight though. The power to weight of this was scary & road legal….😱
I assume Cerbera is a nod to Cerberus, one of the dogs who guarded the gates to Hell.
Exactly
TVR is bonkers, and that's great if you are too. A friend of mine bought a Griffith V8 because he knew he wouldn't make it to 35 if he kept riding motorcycles. As many as their older designs the Griffith looks like a sophisticated stylish little cabriolet, it's not, it's bonkers.
Dont let their hubris to build their own brilliant but flawed straigh-6 and this double 6 fool you, this TreVoR guy was building low budget supercars from a shed, with tubes, fiber glass, Rover engines, Opel Vectra rear light units turned upside down and made highly unusual designs out of it. TVR was probably the first to use LED lights because that was much easier and cheaper with a shed build. Bonkers by concept.
I love tvr for exactly that. They were old school ariel, savage cars.
I studied at Bispham College for Auto Engineering, just down the road from where TVR were built, in blackpool, where Jaguar first started.
They used the main road near the college for speed tests and my best mate at the time, his brother was a TVR mechanic.
Glorious days to hear them first, then see them second.
i did motor sports there and most of the tutors had worked at tvr
Cerbera is the Latin version of the Greek, Cerberus. The mythological three headed dog at the gates of Hades. And you're right, the car is also a beast. A friend of mine had a TVR Tuscan which he took out onto the autobahns whilst stationed in Germany. It gave many a Porsche driver a surprise! A bit "Hairy" when high speed cornering though.
TVRs in general tend to do this, as far as I understand:
1. Give the driver a big thrill.
2. Scare the driver to death.
3. Break down a little, and shed a couple of parts.
Not unlike Lancia...
@@CD-Gaming Lancia usually didn't do #2. They did however produce some amount of iron oxide instead; at least from the 70s and on.
And the Cerbera Speed 12 did those things so much that even the mighty TVR said it wasn't suitable for road use
TVRs were always mad, even back in the kitcar days, but when the 90's hit they started going properly nuts.
Always loved the Tuscan myself, both seeing them IRL and driving them in Test Drive Unlimited.
Got huge Gran Turismo 2 Flashbacks here. 😁
You know how difficult it was to control the Speed 12 in GT2? Bloody hell it was insanely fast and roared. In GT3 it looked the same as it does here, but more controllable.
@@Marc-so2cd Yes in GT3 it was more easier to drive but I don´t know why, that uncontrollable behaviour in GT2 was more fun. I liked the challenge to control that Beast.
The incredible TVR Speed 12.
One of my favourite cars of all time.
Apart from the Dodge Viper RT/10 and the McLaren F1, which are two of my favourite cars of all time.
Along with the Ford GT40 and the Mini Cooper....
As well as the Lotus 49
and Lotus 79 too.
And of course the Audi Quattaro and Lancia 037 & the Subaru Impreza.
As an Englishman I love TVR. Please check out some of our other niche sport car manufacturers such as Noble
More TVR - everything about them is worth checking out (almost)
TVR are now being sold in the US as vintage collectors cars. There is a firm run by a British guy specialising in importing them and registering the car as road legal.
i can imagine how much of a pain it must be to get them on the US roads considering how little safety they got
Even the standard TVR Cerbera was special to see back in the day. Jay Leno has an episode about them where they talk about it and the company in quite a bit of detail. Worth a watch.
I remember watching Peter Wheeler (TVR Chairman ) racing in the British TVR Tuscan Championship at Knockhill. It must be cool to race one of your own cars
All TVRs are crazy beasts… a Tuscan features heavily in the chases scenes in the film Swordfish.
Great Film!
They're not all crazy? The old V6's are quite tame.
There are lots of colourful stories about the history of TVR.
They were all handbuilt, so plenty of stories about how the employees would leave little messages for each other on assorted panels. So if you lift the carpeting out the way, owners may still find things like "Robbo is a c***" written somewhere.
I also recall hearing a story about how company owner Peter Wheeler's dog helped style the front lights on the TVR Chimaera by taking a chomp out of the clay model.
On "Classic" Top Gear (before Clarkson, Hammond and May revived their legendary reboot of it), they did a "TVR Special" episode.
When they go to the factory they drove past my old high school (I only found out they were at the local garden centre after the fact 🙄)
In my late teens I saw a Cerbera tuned up with a body kit outside a shop at the top of our street, the paint on these were pearlescant (at least as far as I know) and when you see it combined with the bodywork it's really quite a sight, it's really a unique car.
Then the owner came out of the shop and fired it up...the sound makes the hair on your balls stand on end.
My (only car) daily driver is a TVR Cerbera in the same ruby red colour and front light set up. It's a '97 but I swapped the engine (original 4.2 I still have) for a LS3 (500bhp). The car is 1250KG or 2755lbs. It's brutal and gorgeous and a total femme fatale diva to own and drive since I bought it in 2006.
I had the standard TVR Cerbera road car, 4.2L v8, exactly the same colour as the Cerbera in Jeremy Clarkson's Supercar drag race, no spoilers, but that's one to check out.
The Cerbera with an V8 , I thought it was inline 6 and the Griffith was V8…
@@bennyhannover9361 TVR's own AJP8 flat plane crank V8 in the Cerbera in 4.2 and 4.5L versions. The TVR Speed Six straight 6 engine was added to the Cerbera lineup after it had first appeared in the Tuscan. Only the Cerbera used the AJP8, the Chimaera and Griffith (I had both of these as well at different times) used the Rover V8 engine in 4.0, 4.3, 4.5 and 5 litre versions.
Yep I remember that .. vs a viper .. v8 vantage.. and others .. cerbera did standing mile in 31seconds 👌
@@bennyhannover9361 yep v8 .. I believe it’s a Range Rover v8 base re developed by tvr but most Tvr are v8 from Griffith through cerbera and segaris
The one that had been fettled with so it smashed the competition.😂
Weird to me that you go straight to the advanced prototype rather than the production Cerbera V8. A phenomenal vehicle that is the most fun I will ever have on 4 wheels and it was street legal for less than £50,000. Amazing value for the novel engineering, inventiveness, brutality and sheer class.
It was in a few playstation games need for speed and gran turismo. The door handles are solenoid the buttons are on the bottom of the mirrors
TVR was kind of crazy. How about developping an inline 6, a V8 and a V12 on your own while selling just a few hundred cars? :D
a few hundred? There are a LOT more TVRs on the road than a few hundred; most models they produced a couple of thousand.....I mean there are still hundreds of Cerberas on the road (still only one speed 12 though)
That straight 6 was something, only little smaller than the V8 and all about responsiveness.
The V8 was an evolution of the Rover V8 which was an Buick 215 c.u.i before
@@bennyhannover9361 Not anything to do with the Rover V8, as for starters it's a 75 degree bank angle ! Was designed by Motorsport Engineer AJ Melling !!
I'm so pleased you have found this legend from the little island 😊🎉, from the little island 😀
"Where's the door handle?" the classic TVR question 😂
I think that car was in a Silverstone Auctions a few months ago.
It was, it sold for around £600000
I’m 48 (is that old), I recall my childhood when TVR’s were looked at as a step up from a kit car, on the mid 90’s and early 2000’s when they became a genuine performance brand. A shame we don’t see many around.
The front reminds me of the Wiesmann roadsters,
a handmade german gem with big BMW engines.
Do you know them?
Tom 😎
I saw one on Coronation Drive, Brisbane, Australia back in 2015. Blew my mind!
That Car was the Feature top level Car in the Original Xbox game, Project Gotham Racing!
you have to give him props for pulling pin, recognising the significance of the power in the wrong hands, especially after all the money that they put in!!
If I remember right there's 2 cerbera's. The red one is factory made and the purple one was build with the spare parts from the red one by the previous owner, who owned both cars until a couple of years ago. He then sold the red one, i think, and hold on to the purple one...
TVR is from my hometown of Blackpool, and I lived on the road where TVR 1st started back in the 80's.
I've actually sat in this very car, too.
Real shame what happened to TVR, we lost something very special there. Also, the end of TVR had a huge impact on many peoples lives as everyone in Blackpool knew someone that worked there.
For me as a British petrol head fanatic, I still think the worst thing to happen to automotive history, was the falling of TVR back in 2008
TVR was all over the first few Gran Turismo games. Not just this car, but many of their models. All had their own distinctive design, and they were ALL a handful (a very wild, but fun and FAST handful) to drive. If you could make one behave, you had a monster in your stable.
The TVR speed 12 was built for FIA's GT1 racing class to go against Ferrari, McLaren and Porsche. It was a homologation special, like all the GT1 class cars were. All of the GT1 racing cars were extreme cars that barely resembled a street car on the outside with custom chassis and suspension on the inside, and sometimes engines not native to the road cars they resembled. In fact GT1 cars became closer to closed cockpit prototypes at the end (excluding the Dauer 962 which was the Porsche group c car converted into a barely road legal gt when the class was introduced.) The Cerbera speed 12 started out as project 7/12. A tube frame racing car that had a V12 made from 2 TVR Speed 6 (inline) engines and it was made out of steel. Not aluminum or iron, but steel. The car later got the body from the new (at the time) Cerbera road car, hence the name. A bunch of those performance figures are estimated as there wasn't a way to test the car's full potential safely at the time. In fact, the road car was later fitted with the racing car's body kit just so the car would have some down force for added control, it was a safety measure. The increased cornering performance was an added bonus. Mind you standard TVR's were already considered crazy cars that had no abs, and some without traction control and airbags. They were purist sports cars. The guy in charge at the time thought those cars were safe to sell to people, which should tell you how crazy the speed 12 is. Some ex-employees are trying to make a new one with a twin turbo V12.
Always loved TVR's and the unorthodox way that they were ran which was completely mad, reminds me of the story of the TVR boss Peter Wheeler’s German Pointer taking a bite out of the polystyrene styling model for the Chimaera, and rather than fixing the mould this then becoming part of the final design for font fog/indicator recess! Crazy!
Plastic boombastic TVR is fantastic .
I can't wait for you to see some of the colours you could get on TVRs
I got to drive tony Robinsons TVR.
Shit off a shovel.
Even just sat at idle it was intimidating
My all-time favourite TVR is the Griffith; beautiful design combined with a range of V8 engines.
They made 2 Speed 12's before deciding they were too dangerous for the public. They carried on producing lower powered Cerbera (ruclips.net/video/V6nQjYhigzo/видео.html) such as the Speed 6 until 2006. Currently there are 436 TVR CERBERA left in the UK with an MOT. Take a look at the TVR Griffeth 500 for a nice sedate everyday driver.
there was 3 prototypes, 2 of which were stripped for parts after the project was cancelled
I don't know why I find it so funny that the TVR is just the name TreVoR as the founder Trevor Wilkinson :D
That vehicle has something that is missing on today's cars, it's character or charisma, probably both 😂😂😂
Wrong, it's insanity
Nice to hear you pronouncing the Cerbera properly. Never really been into TVR's myself, the build quality is a little pants. The body panels can flap around at higher speeds for starters.
The Griffith V8's are always a hoot in the Historic/Classic sports car races, some with single Exhaust trumpet angled upwards at rear belching flames like a flame thrower.
I remember the prototype being featured in Auto Express back in the late 90s. At the time I seem to remember it was just the TVR speed 12. You looked at it and couldn't take it all in. Utterly stunning. Ian look up the prototype, it looks even more menacing!
Ive seen this car in the flesh at the time it was at the Lakeland museum. I think its still there. Its displayed near the the entrance door for the cars to come in and out of the museum because the owner does sometime come along to take it out for a spin. Its a crazy design to see up close. For me the highlight of the museum as I had no idea it was going to be there.
The other cars around the 3 minute mark are all TVRs, the Silver one is the Speed 6, the little brother of this car which actually went into production. They're gorgeous and had one of the most brutal straight 6 engines ever put into production. There is only one legit Speed 12 out there, but there is another that was assembled by enthusiasts from leftover parts and a highly modified Jaguar V12 after TVR folded. The red one in the handheld video is the same one from the Goodwood footage, the other one was purple last time I saw anything on it. TVR were putting race tech into their cars in the 90s. They are fast even by today's standards with zero driving aids.
Morgan makes some interesting cars as well.
I always loved the looks and sound of TVR's but never got a chance to own one. They are still for sale although they are not making new ones. The standard version of the Cerbera was a 4.0 litre didn't have the skirts but was still a nuts car and was one of my favourites from TVR. The bodies were all fibreglass so all were lightweight with big engineers. Although they are not common you can pick up a good version of the standard car for about £30K and they still look amazing. They also had some very unique colours 🙂I think the last model they build was the Sagaris which was another amazing car to see and hear.
Such underrated brand, so many great cars under their name, but with little support behind it, my favs are the Griffith and the Tuscan, and they really are what I love about a sports car, raw power, under a small, lightweight chassi, and the Speed 12 is that idea pushed to the max, I really wish they would bring back the Griffith like they promised to, this is a brand that I would hate to see it gone.
It was a sad day when TVR closed. They occupied a similar niche to early Lotus, somewhere between kit cars and exotics. Morgan are still going and until recently were still family owned. Alex Roy has done loads of videos of his Morgan 3 Wheeler. He seemed to fall in love with the car as soon as he drove it. I’m not enamoured of the new version as it would look silly with a Lewis machine gun for the passenger. Whereas that would blend in perfectly on the older model.
I have drove past the lakeland car museum twice recently and did not know a speed 12 was in there. Next time I will defo pop in.
There’s a video on the Drivetribe channel that explains the history of this car and where it is now, including the second purple car which I think was built from spares.
TVR Tuscan R is such a gorgeous ride too. They knew how to design...some stuff. Not battery positioning though. Dodge Avenger seems to have it inside the front fender right in front of the driver's side front wheel, but not like some TVR's, behind the front wheel and upside down with terminals out in the open :D
TVR's in General are Nutty . They HAVE built some absolute Dogs too , unfortunately .
TVR are my favourite car manufacturer. Dad had an S2 when I was little. Awesome machines, look & sound wild. Not the most reliable cars ever but still awesome cars.
There is technically 2 in existence.
1 Red, 1 Purple.
However one one is a genuine TVR vehicle. The Red one.
The purple one was built using genuine parts by someone I believe worked at TVR. The purple one is a slightly tamer version of the red lunatic. (but is still a riot)
The red one recently sold at an automotive auction house for alot of money. The road car became the race car. I also believe it had a go at LeMans. One of the early Gran Turismo games featured a "Cadbury Purple" Speed12 concept car with slightly different features.
In the videos you were watching at the beginning of the video, see the standard Cerbera (in yellow) following the Cerbera Speed12 to see a comparison between the two.
I believe the Silver one was just one of the 2 resprayed.
Also fun fact - the same british guy owned both up until recently.
Seen this beast in person at the old Blackpool Garage. i even have the model. my favourite car of all time.
also, Jeremy Clarkson had the TVR Speed 12 ( Not Cerbera Speed 12 ) on one of his 90’s shows, a white one. completely insane, so insane he didn’t even drive it. haha
car was recently sold at auction, very good video about it. car got cancelled when the company owner took it home and was like, nope, this is too crazy.
Cool, you pronounced it perfectly. This car is a violent monster.
I own a tuned TVR Griffith 500.
It's a 5.0ltr V8 and mines dynod at 360bhp..
It goes like a rocket! Just the engine idling puts a smile on my face.
Yep, it's only just over 1000kgs (2200lbs).
You should check out Spyker cars. They're crazy looking Dutch cars.
Yep, bonkers in their own special way too.
problem is they only produced one model but mad all the same but some one is retoring and trying to start again (shmee150 visted them not long ago)
Door handle is a little button underneath the wing mirror on other TVRs but that doesn't look like standard mirrors, they didn't want standard door handles spoiling the look of the car lol. Fun fact, top gear put members of the public in a TVR and offered them cash if they could get out but none could find the door handle inside either - it's an aluminium dial in the centre behind the handbrake that you twist in the direction of the door you want to open
Defo look into more TVR cars, sagaris, chimera, Cerberus, Tuscan, Griffith, and also some older classics .. the design features are awesome always loved a trip to Blackpool where they used to be made… keep the videos coming. 👍
TVR can be something really special to experience. Most of their models like the Griffith look like they are still in the 50s/60s. But in the late 90s they got more experimental with the Tuscan Speed 6 and Cerbera leading to the Sagaris.
The Speed 6 did get some movie time in the John Travolta movie Swordfish.
My most memorable experience of one was aural. Walking to work one day and hearing automotive thunder. An engine note I couldn't place and then saw this TVR pull out of a gated home. It actually made my chest vibrate with the engine sound. The way I had only known at Air shows when iconic craft like the Spitfire flew past.
tvr is one of the few brands that was feared not only by who got to drive their cars, but by the founder as well, especially the sagaris and cerbera, putting 700 horsepower in a tube frame steel chassis with some sort of fiberglass body weighting just over 1,2 tons is W I L D
First time I learned about this car was on Granturismo 2, been obsessed with it ever since, you should see it in its white racing graphics
This car was available in the video game Gran Turismo 2. And it was insane to drive. The real ones that were made were used in racing. However only one still exists and looks slightly different from the one that still exists.
The factory in Blackpool which all TVR's were made has now been demolished. And the company has not recovered from its sale in the mid 2000's
He needs to react to the Wiesmann GT (MF5 and previous iterations). Such a iconic german car. Gotta love the gecko!
1000hp in the 90’s is wild.
1000hp in the 90’s Naturally Aspirated is insane.
Got to love a widow maker. 😬
Take a look at the TVR Sagaris when you get time. 👍🏼
One of these was track tested by the guys on "Top Gear " ,I think Richard Hammond was the driver . It was pretty wild . 🇬🇧
There was a TVR dealers near me growing up and i used to go there every month and sit in all the cars, Most the electrical stuff on a TVR is from various Ford's, fiesta, escort etc. Same with the lights the rear tails are from a fiesta lol.
That's one sweet machine. I agree with the remark below. When you meet them on the road you hear them before you see them. Next thing you know you're looking at its rear end. The intakes either side of the radiator direct air at the brake discs. 1000Kg is about a ton (actually a shade under). I dread to think what the insurance costs. The on road footage appears to be around central London. Compared to this any Porsche is a baby.
There are several TVR's that drive around my local area, we have a high density of supercars and luxury vehicles here so I'd imagine I see more than other parts of the UK but you can tell the sound a mile off, I often try to guess which cars are coming along the road that is parallel with my house.
In the International Motor Show in Germany 1984 I saw (and sat) in a car called the Vector Twin Turbo W2. The later W8 version was featured in the movie Rising Sun from 1993 with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. Maybe you like it 🏎️.
TVR was first made in a small garage in Blackpool and went on to have a big factory in Blackpool and was famous for being in the film swordfish with john Travolta hugh jackman and hali berry
You should check out the Zenvo TSR-GT!! A Danish hypercar. Completely handmade.
1360 horsepower, 5,8 litre V8, active aero (turning wing) and 0-60 in 2,8 seconds 🔥🔥
And a LIMITED top speed of 263 mph (424 kmh) 😲
For a while the zenvo was the only car that had a turbo and supercharged engine
TVRs have always been kinda special to me. And I'm American. Their new cars are kind of interesting, as well!
3:17..... that was the "new" TVR, and the green car is an older TVR. I'm still ignorant about TVR models, myself.
TVR at the time, when this insane car was put out, had some bizarre liveries. I'd even call it "chameleon paint" because it changes colors as you're sitting there.
(Thank you Grand Turismo 5 for introducing me to this brand, and the info I've shown)
My dad had a tvr cerbera speed 6 and that was rapid. It looked tamer but still really nice. This thing is a completely different animal though.
TVR and Marcos are great British car manufacturers who made some pretty bonkers cars.
The guy who owns it, was selling it recently....he had spare parts so built another one.
Apparently someone else built one so technically there's 3.
The standard cebera speed 8 was ludicrously fast for its time with an in house built v8 based on current f1 engine designs. (90s)
There's also a tvr typhon for sale atm which is a one off homologation special of their gt race car, bit like a Tvr tuscan with a fastback, t400 and t440 I think we're made.
Check out the lister storm
The Speed 6 and 12 were hands down my favourite cars in Gran Turismo 3.
Legendary car in British sport car/TVR circles… I’ve owned a few Trevor’s, my first was a Wedge shaped (pop up headlights) 350i, I then had 2 x Wedge 400SE, followed by a 450 Chimaera…& then my 2 favourite TVRs owned, a Wedge 450 SEAC, and my last TVR, a 420 SEAC…
Both cars fairly rare.. My 420 SEAC had a genuine aramid and carbon fibre body. Standard Wedge shaped TVRs were fibreglass..
Awesome cars.. I really should get another 😎
next up: Morgan Aero
These used to be broken down by the side of the road, up and down the uk. Most of them have been wrapped around lampposts now.
You asked about the lack of door handles. Many of the "normal" TVR's had a button under the mirror to open the doors.
TVR truly was one of the most awesome brands in the 90s and early 00s. They have existed long before that and always where pretty brutal lightweight sports cars. Notoriously unreliable and barely above kitcar level, but when it works, the driving experience is unlike anything else. During the 90s they became increasingly quirky and absolutely bonkers, without taking anything away of the other qualities. Door handles? Who needs those? And cars like the Grifith, Chimaera or Tuscan were already pretty scary with just 300-400 hp, so imagine having a 1000....
Surely worth looking into more. And when you're done with TVR, you might want to have look at Bristol. Not nearly as brutal, but every bit as eccentric....
If you've never played Gran Turismo 2 and 3 then you don't know this car. This car is as much a beast as the Lister Storm V12 that both competed in the British GT class racing in the late 90s and 2000s.
TVR was nuts. I liked their wedge shaped car, I think it was called Tasmin.
I owned a Cerbera back in 2000. I’m British and don’t own guns, but if I had a gun back then I’d still consider my TVR more dangerous to be anywhere near. I took a girl on a first date and it was so fast she wee’d on my seat. It was fairground fast. TVR stood for the owners name, TreVoR. You are saying the name correctly. No door handles, a button under the wing mirror opened a solenoid latch and you pressed the Cerbera badge on the rear to pop the boot to locate the fuel filler cap.
Back at the turn of the century I saw a lot of TVR's... And by "a lot" I mean, maybe once a month or so... Nowadays I haven't seen one in at least 10 years... The main one I used to see was a Cabriolet with all front lights in a row... Beautiful car!
Guess it was a Tuscan speed 6 and a chimaera...
Cerbera was 2+2 coupe with Front mid engine, tube châssis . Engines were made by TVR. AP6 a 6 inline cylinders and 2 V8 AP8. One with 4,2 l and one in 4,5 l. With 22° angle and flat plane. And inline 6 IS thé base of this V12.
You should do a video on other TVR'S, they're such awesome cars. Am pretty sure you'd love them, they made a few really cool very fast cars.
Definitely only the one road car built, plus a race cars.
I saw the racers in the British GT Championship back in the early 2000s - insanely loud and spectacular, but usually broke down.
The road car came up for auction last year, think it didn't sell.
There's a RUclips channel called Drive Tribe that did a video on this car, they was able to find the car and even hear the engine running and in person it's very loud.