Smolenski's Dream :P

[LandQuail]

you got me.

[LandQuail]

Nice owl, by the way.

[LandQuail]

I don' know, TVR just strikes me as a funny company. Their cars have always been so overdesigned... they really do look like sketches in the margins of an artistic 12-year old's chemistry textbook. I have a great respect of TVR, and of Smolenski, but the joke is irresistable. Great cars though, when they're running.

[Coventrysucks]

Great cars though, when they're running.

Expert analysis

By the same notion, I guess you're probably a great guy apart from the fact that you get stuck in doorways 'cause you're so fat, huh?

[IWantAnAudiRS6]

Well... as we've yet to see a Typhon that works...

And let's not forget that RAC breakdown cover should really be an option for most TVR models. My uncle had a Cerbera for a while, and it was like a latterday MGB- more time spent in the hard shoulder than driving the ****ing thing

TVR don't have the best track-record for reliability, but they're damn cool cars.

[Coventrysucks]

Well... as we've yet to see a Typhon that works...

So?

Bugatti took several years along with hundreds of millions of pounds in getting the Veyron to work.

You want TVR to do the same sort of thing on 1/100th the budget?

[IWantAnAudiRS6]

So?

Bugatti took several years along with hundreds of millions of pounds in getting the Veyron to work.

You want TVR to do the same sort of thing on 1/100th the budget?

Yep.

They promised it. And they did the Speed 12.

The Typhon is effectively the Le Mans car with a larger engine and a supercharger, the Veyron was from scratch and was a much tougher project. TVR 'only' need to get 585bhp, whereas VW, sorry, Bugatti wanted 1000bhp.

[Coventrysucks]

Yep.

They promised it. And they did the Speed 12.

What Speed 12?

You mean that one barely road legal example built from the remains of the race cars?

Hardly a 911 competitor...

The Typhon is effectively the Le Mans car with a larger engine and a supercharger.

No, the Typhon was to be a carbon composite construction, compared with the GRP T400/440 R.

The engine was the same 4.0-litre speed six as in the T400/440 R but, as you say, with a supercharger.

The Typhon was also to use a bespoke sequential gearbox built from scratch.

TVR 'only' need to get 585bhp, whereas VW, sorry, Bugatti wanted 1000bhp.

TVR got 680bhp+ from the supercharged Speed Six before they cut it back to reduce overheating, stresses on the transmission, and to improve longevity & reliability.

The point is that the Veyron, according to Bugatti, was "ready for production" in 2003, and it took a further 2 years to get from that stage to a car which didn't overheat, crash at any speed over 100mph, and that was to a quality that was to be expected of a car worth a million of whatever currancy you choose.

That was the same type of development that the Typhon required to go from the typical TVR - fast but a bit dodgy, to a credible 911 rival as it should have been.

That development money was put into improving quality of the Tamora, T350, and Tuscan, and on developing the Sagaris - a model much more important to TVR's future than the Typhon was.

Of the three cars that were in production when Smolenski took over, I think that Smolenski has a supercharged Typhon, and two other customers have cars that were converted to T440R spec.

[MrKipling]

they really do look like sketches in the margins of an artistic 12-year old's chemistry textbook.

That's what makes them so brilliant!

[Mustang]

If its anything as mad as the first speed 12.... WAHAY!!!!

[h00t_h00t]

I doubt the Speed 12 will be anything like the origional, Smolenski wants to make TVRs more reliable and easier to drive.

[matek]

Well he did love the original TVRs and therefore wants to keeps the type of driving but improve the reliabitlty that doesnt affect the way the car behaves it just makes it last longer and stay in one piece

So the speed 12 will be an imense piece of British motoring maybe not as mad as the last one but hay this one will be road legal and deemed safe for the public

[LandQuail]

TVR also plans to sell cars (maybe they're already doing it) with a 36,000 mile warranty, much to the derision of the British press. I don't know what's to blame for TVR's reliability problems (percieved or otherwise.) It may be one of those "your car was built on a Monday and the coffeemaker was broken so the heater core in your Cerbera will always leak and the compression on cylinder 2 is low" kind of thing.

It's not as though TVR is doing anything new, but then again, they do offer bespoke engines. That must raise development costs through the roof, but good to see these days when even Bristol, which was once as British as the Union Jack stitched onto the Queen's bloomers, has an American Engine wedged under the hood. (and it's not as though Lotus will find any more Rover K-series engines)

Acually... Is TVR the only car maker left in England that produces their own Engines in-house? Jag and Aston use leftover bits from Ford to great effect, but they're not really worthy of a "made in England" sticker.

Unless, of course, I'm a fat ****ing moron all of the sudden.

[Jack_Bauer]

I think TVR is currently the only British manufacturer to produce its own engines in house. (The Melling Hellcat will allegedly have its own 700bhp V10 engine, but that is not production ready, yet.) It's something TVR should rightly be proud of but, as you said above, producing a high performance engine on the kind of comparatively miniscule development budget TVR have is always gonna bring questions about reliability. Certainly the first few years worth of the current Speed Six engines were full of bugs, there were plenty of horror stories of multiple engine rebuilds etc. They are reportedly significantly better these days though, after continued development.

I guess that's part of the problem TVR have with reliability. In the recent past they've employed a very high turnover of new models, bringing out a new one almost every year for the British Motorshow. This means that there is no way there can be the amount of time devoted to development that the big boys get. Effectively the first few dozen cars off the production line end up being like test mules in a way until the creases get ironed out. Another reliability problem is TVR's reliance on using fully bespoke detailing and interiors. If they just raided the parts bin of a big manufacturer then they'd have significantly better durability in all the minor details, but then of course they'd lose all the 'specialness' that having a bespoke, hand-built interior gives to a car.

[LandQuail]

Oh, and I read somewhere, probably in EVO that the plans for a Roadgoing Speed-12 were shelved after TVR's former owner (or CEO or whatever) took one home one weekend for a lark and found it to be utterly unusable and ridiculous on the road. Sort of like a Dauer 929 (or whatever numbers) or a Do-n'ke^rvoo?oort or other motorized lunatic asylum posing as a road car.

The new Speed 12 will of course be less extreme than the original. There's only one road-registered Speed 12 in Britain (and probably the rest of the world as well) and there's a good reason for that. Driving a flame-spitting Le Mans refugee on the street makes only slightly more sense than driving a Toyota Camry down the Mulsanne.

Do you realize that the Speed 12's driver had to wriggle Through the roll cage like a goddamn garden snake in order to hunker down in the belly of the car so low that even the most arrogant motoring journalists admit that they barely could see where they were going?

And still armchair auto experts reckon that a "true enthusiast" would tolerate setting fire to the hedges on either side of the road while gradually going deaf (and maybe blind as well, if it's to be a daily driver) as they blast down to the corner store for trash bags and toilet paper leaving bits of fiberglass strewn along pockmarked roads and speed bumps and turning what used to be just another tuesday into some deranged new-age telling Hansel and Gretel in which Spitfires and Messerschmitts contribute the soundtrack?

You'll Scare The ****ing Ducks From The Local Park's Pond And They'll Never Come Back!

And then who will the asshole be? You, for insisting on an "undiluted" Speed 12 experience, or Smolenski for toning them down a bit before sending them out the door?

At any rate though, you've really got to give it to TVR for making such special cars. Their uniqueness forgives a multitude of faults. Remember a few decades ago when all Aston-Martin V8 Vantage buyers were "invited" to participate
product development by rigorously recording faults as they appeared and acting as de-facto test drivers until the Vantage's bugs were ironed out? Maybe TVR sould just cut the act and admit that their cars are unreliable and ask owners to band together and fix their own problems, maybe meeting every few months in Nikolai Smolenski's "secret treetop clubhouse" (sorry).
to discuss issues with TVR engineers. Worked for Aston...