TVR

lomb

Anyone on Boards have a TVR ? Been looking into them lately. Big V8,powerful rear wheel drive cars, fairly simple, great looks, amazing interiors. Prices in the UK have dropped to around 7k stg on Chimaeras. Appeal to me, I think new cars have lost touch with reality ie expensive, lots of buttons that arent needed, electric feedback less steering , automatics, badly designed look like a child designed.

They reakon your not a real petrolhead until you own a Tvr over on pistonheads(which was originally a Tvr forum)

Supergurrier

Prepare your wallet for a pounding

I still want a spin if you come to a boards meet in one mind

Tropheus

What about parts availability given TVR are no more? There is a reason they're so cheap.

SV

Cheapish yeah but good luck trying to fix them when they go wrong, and they will go wrong.

lomb

Parts appear readily available surprisingly eg http://www.clever-trevor.net/TVR/Parts/Cerbera%20V8/a%7C.htm
Tvr look to be relaunching shortly http://tvr.co.uk/

ironclaw

lomb wrote: »

Tvr look to be relaunching shortly http://tvr.co.uk/

Been on the cards for a while now. I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Personally, from my research on them, they are a second 'fun' car to have on the weekends. Not really a daily driver at all. You'd want to be reasonably mechanically handy as they are a touchy piece of engineering and do need a decent bit of work. If it was me, I'd invest the money in a similar Lotus. Parts and mechanical knowledge of them is far more widespread.

Ghost Train

they were great to drive on the original Gran Turismo

lomb

SV wrote: »

Cheapish yeah but good luck trying to fix them when they go wrong, and they will go wrong.

That isnt really true though from what owners report. Some guy does repeated trips to Germany from the UK in his Tvr without a bother. The office in Germany kept taking the piss that he was going to be stranded. The first time he took over a Mercedes CLS the air suspension failed. He took the piss with the Germans when he eventually got to the office there.
They are very simple cars which is why they were made for so long profitably in a modern automated era.

EazyD

My Dad's friend owned a Tuscan(pearlescent) for maybe 3/4years, serious machine altogether. Wasn't without its troubles though and eventually sold on. That said, it was like being on a knife edge in the wet, seriously tail happy and snappy, and very unforgiving when it did kick out.

BMJD

Ghost Train wrote: »

they were great to drive on the original Gran Turismo

Cerbera LM was the car to have for setting lap records :-)

mickdw

I loved the Cerbera. Just about perfect design at the time.

levonhelm

probably a bit late with this response...but anyway..here goes...I have owned a TVR Chimaera 4.0 for more than 10 years now...Bought it in the middle of the tiger madness when I finally felt i could pander to my desire to have as close to a super car as 20k could get me. it didnt take long to figure out that 20k wouldn't get anything other than a clapped out porsche or an absolute basket case ferrari..so there was very little else that would look special , sound special and go like stink...Had grown up in the 80's hating tvr's, considered them kit cars and the models available then were pig ugly. The griffith changed all that though and then the chimaera...so having read up a bit about it i reckoned it was worth at least looking in "buy and sell" and see did anyone even have one!!!. Well i could hardly believe when lo and behold i came across one sitting in an underground carpark in a hotel in dub...it had been sitting there for over a year, owner had change of circumstance so car had to go...,took me a couple of visits before i could even get into it as batt was flat, then immobiliser wouldn't let it start but i reckoned it looked savage and offered the bloke i think it was 18k at the time...cant remember, but bought it anyway without even hearing it go.....well on the understanding it would be running when i came to collect...So anyway to cut 10 years into a few lines , its been a joy to own, its purely a weekend car and that is all i would ever recommend one for, though i have taken it all over the country in the early years of ownership...very comfortable once you get used to the low driving position.., 30 mpg possible on a journey with just a little restraint,
It has never seen a garage in my ten years of ownership, local grease monkey , changed the castrol magnatec every second year, stuck a set of plugs in it myself a few years ago...(i can hear the purists retch with disgust!!!!) ..it wouldnt start only once (blown fuel pump relay...a common fault...fixed for less than a tenner.....took me a week to find where the fecking thing was tho)...I put up 20k miles , totally trouble free and around all sorts of irish roads, for teh first five years, for the past five just do probably 500 a year just to keep it running,
It hasn't been road legal for the last few years now due to that same tiger keeling over....but it starts first time every time, if the battery is a bit low i just roll it out of the garage and it bump starts in an instant..
I suppose my main point is ....all things being equal ...your experience of owning a tvr (chimaera is all i can speak of) is largely up to what way you want to keep it..I bought mine with a half intention of keeping it for ever ...and im still on schedule!!! in that case im not that bothered to brushing and flossing its teeth every day....its degrading gracefully in terms of the fixtures and fittings so will need a bit of a refurb when i get to put it back on teh road in a few years time....but in the meantime i can still hop into it any day , take off the roof and do a 20 mile spin around the back roads and its breathtaking in how pure a driving experience it offers., and you dont need to be driving the arse out of it to experience this, even just doodling around at 40-60 range and it sounds glorious and purposeful, by all means drop it down a few gears for the fun of it and hold on to your underpants..cos the next ditch is just a sloppy gearchange away!!
The core mechanicals of the Chimaera are well tried and tested and as far as i can ascertain especially the gearbox and brakes are well over rated for the car and thus rarely give up the ghost...the engine too is very reliable...though cam wear will eventually chew away at the horses....
There are some excellent specialists in the uk such as TVR power who specialist in righting a lot of the annoying little issues that can spoil the overall experience of these cars , so if you could get one that had been fettled , no cost spared , by one of these specialist , you would have a rather special car....
overall advise, if you are a petrolhead and like a true sprots car , that looks great but unlike a lot of the other creditable but ultimately incomplete offerings (such as mx5, mgf, boxter etc) , has the noise, power and performance to back it up ...then go for it.....15k would get an excellent Chimaera, youll probably need to spend a bit more if going for any of the more recent models...
you only live once man!!

robertxxx

Is the engine a rover?

levonhelm

yes it the 4.0 v8