The Absurd Yet Brilliant TVR Cerbera - BUY ONE While You Can 

Thanks for the story!!

Similar happened when Musk was out showing off his new MCL F1 to mate Peter Thiel. Only he wrecked it - and it was not insured! Thiel said, "show us what it can do". Musk floored it and immediately lost control!

My all time great poster Car Jack Yes 🙌🏻

Fabricated story.

😂🤫

😂😂😂😂😂

I barely noticed 🤣

Well spotted.

i heard it. speaker might have fallen out or something odd.

You have a cracking looking car there for definite. If you put new number plates on it today, it would still look like its just been newly launched. Be interesting to hear how you find owning a Cerbera, or what the costs involved are like? Sounds like you have spent a nice bit on its upkeep, but it really shows, it looks to be in very good and healthy condition. Best of luck with it and enjoy it 👍

It was a real pleasure Kye!! Loved this car

Great seeing your car! I remember you posted on my channel - I have your numberplate inscribed in my mind! Haha! I am yet to watch this but when I saw a snip I was like "I know that car" 😂 So cool! Right, I will set aside some time to watch this later! 👍😏

Thanks for sharing it with Jack and with us! If these things were put into permanent storage and forgotten it would be a disservice to the people who put their hearts and souls into them.

Absolute cracker. I've always wanted one, in canary yellow, but that's probably a bit idealistic. If I could afford one though, I'm sure I could afford to paint it. Good for you, keeping and looking after such a gorgeous and outrageous motor car. I'm with you regarding the rain thing. Garage in the winter, 2.5k miles in the summer sounds perfect

Chassis is all original and in good nick in this one.

Must have in the three days since you posted then...

Except for the interior. It looks like a couch that you'd find in a 80's coke lord Miami compound.

@@collinsnyder8682you say that like it’s a bad thing!

​@@collinsnyder8682that sounds like a great interior

very good comment and spot on.

" it was much more reliable than non-owners would have you believe." usually the case , I had a 1985 Lotus Excel and used it every day, never had any bother with it , and two Rover Sterling KV6, the Coupé only had 60k on it so didnt do anything to it , the Fastback however need a new starter and alternator at 167k miles, so unreliable lol , I put it in storage with 189k on it and every thing still working and zero rust, journalists just had a thing for slagging off British cars. Working in a garage for 17 years I can say French and Italian cars are the worst (or best if you want a steady income lol )

TVR reliable? Hahahahaha

@@ESKATEUK which did you own and what sort of condition was it in when you bought it?

@@jamieduff1981 a tvr tuscan s, bought with 10k miles on the clock was owned by my dad, the thing fell to pieces, needed constant repairs that cost a bomb, was about 18 years ago now. His best mate had a TVR cerbera and had constant issues with that too and had to sell it due to the upkeep just being too high. Both him and my dad were on good money so it wasn’t like they were poor. My dad after that bought a 911 carrera 4s which we had for many years with far less issues. TVR are built to the lowest quality, and fall to pieces. A fun car but way overpriced these days for what they are. With the issues my dad and his mate had with theirs, I’m quite baffled to hear you say yours was reliable.

I heard somewhere that the odd V angle was because they planned a related V12 (the speed12) so had a vee angle between what's ideal for a V8 (90 degrees) and V12 (60 degrees). No idea if that's true.

What does the term "Flat plane crank" actually mean would you know?

@@slacko1971 The 'regular' US V8 is fitted with a cross-plane crank which has its crank pins positioned at 90 degrees from one another. A flat plane crank has crank pins that are located at 180 degrees from one another so - a flat-plane crank has all of its crank pins in a single, flat plane. A flat plane-crank is inherently balanced when considering its primary forces, so possesses less rotational inertia because they don't require huge counter weights when compared to an equivalent cross-plane type - which is normally fitted with heavy counter weights to achieve a proper (primary and secondary force) engine balance. As previously mentioned engines fitted with flat-plane cranks have a relatively low rotational inertia so tend to rev up quickly, however, the flat-plane crank's achilles heel is that it 'suffers' from secondary force inbalance - so aren't as smooth as a cross-plane type - hence why they are normally used in 'high end' sports cars and race cars where increased engine acceleration (revability) is paramount and ultra-smooth running less so.

@@georgebettiol8338 Wow, thankyou, what a fantastic explanation.Much appreciated.

Except to keep passengers alive of course. Not important….

I remember seeing TVRs in the US. They were powered by a Triumph straight 6 or a small Ford V8 if I remember correctly.

@@allareasindex7984 Yeah we did get just about everything up until the Tasmin and 350i, but sadly not the Wheeler cars.

@@f.kieranfinney457 Unfortunately, there is criminally less NHTSA oversight on that regard then there should be. It pretty much takes a class-action lawsuit of Pinto proportions to actually get them to do anything.

I saw a few TVR 350’s on the Washington DC beltway during the 1980’s! How they got to the States not sure! But if you have money and lots of it there always a way!

I owned a 2001 for 3 years, only sold due to son going to Unl. It was properly sorted A/C worked and I was so sick of people denigrating them. I have owned several very quick cars but the Cerb was undoubtedly , most fun and the best. RIP wonderful TVR.

completely agree@@kevinmaile5873

I drive mine this summer between 35°c and 45°c in comfortable cool interior without overeating and with great pleasure.

I am genuinely delighted that you had a good one. I think the problem is that, given the small number of cars actually made and the numbers of owners, even on this thread, who report problems, that you were fortunate. Having worked in manufacturing, things tend to go wrong either because of design faults, or tightness of manufacturing tolerances. I think I read somewhere that the a/c problem was fixed in later cars by rerouting some of the piping, which in early cars went to close to the engine. However, TVRs were, in general, made to pretty loose tolerances. A car is the sum of it's parts. Some cars will have been made with some or all of the critical parts within tolerance, and will have been generally reliable, but others won't. Hopefully most of those cars will by now have had the faulty parts replaced....@@kevinmaile5873

but would kinda make sense at every level :) - That was one helluva trouncing of respected cars ;)

Steve Sutcliffe ran one for a year, from an independent. It was dynoed to one bhp of the power quoted by TVR. At the end of that year it was tested, and proved quicker and faster than the original Autocar road test....that 20.2 seconds to 150mph, and 21.6 seconds for the standing Kilometer. Extrapolating the figures and using basic mathematics, this off the shelf car would prove to be significantly quicker than the 31.2 John Ravenscroft achieved on the Clarkson feature. The opposition were clearly unhappy with the result 😂

I consider the Dodge Viper to be in a similar category, an exhilarating and thrilling drive where you are very likely to run out of talent.

Which dealer was that? I was a 14 year old lad in 98' but my father was MD of TVR Redhill LTD. Anyway, I went out in a 4:5, and the pops and bangs are still with me to this day 😆 I managed to get my own Cerb 4.5, and it's been about 2.5 years since I purchased it and my god they're awesome.. 😁

@@RobsCars Peninsula Automotive(we where an independent first then main dealer) I did call into Redhill a few times over the years and remember a warm welcome

..that, ..and the pre-cat Griff :)

Lol the Vicar of Dibley

I love the back bone steel tube chassis. All the TVR's right back to the 50's and 60's have this type of super light and super Ridgid chassis. I drove 3000km across New Zealand in the last month in a Chimaera the 2 seat version of this. It's not good on poorly sealed roads... so little suspension travel. But very comfortable seats for even full 8 hour drives. I prefer the venerable Rover V8 TVR sooped-up for the Griff and Chimaera. Very nice sound and very good torque with reliability. The engine weighs less than a 4 cylinder cast iron block! The gear box is the same one most Cobras use and only weighs 35kg!!

Very, very, very cool!@@gairnmclennan5876

I'm sure you're happy with the results! It must be an absolute ballistic missile!

Wow, thank you!

I live local too and know half a dozen lads who worked there.

saves worrying about too many shut lines...that will be Peter then! ;)

And the Tasmin was also a coupe.

@@The0rs Yes, a few hundred 2+2 Tasmins were made, plus the 420 "Sports Saloon" prototype.

wow nice - how did you rate the Venturi? I have an unhealthy desire to own one.

@@alfamonk It was without a shadow of a doubt the best and worst car I owned for these reasons: 1) No-one ver knew what it was - so filling up was always interesting. 2) It made no noise whatsoever. No rasp, no rumble, no crackles, or pops, downshifts and up shifts smooth as silk. The only noise was the turbo whistling like a banshee as it spooled up circa 3K revs and then holy heck the far distant road suddenly appeared under your wheels with no warning whatsoever. It was fast but not seemingly so. Drive a series 1 mini at a third of the volume and you feel like a rally driver at every corner, this thing just got on with pulling in the horizon at an alarmng rate and when a corner did appear it just went round with no drama at all. 3) It was unreliable, I think I would be right in saying that Dave at Oselli in Whitney Oxfordshire ( I live in Cheltenham) had my car more than I did. I trailered it there and back more times than I care to recall - and it was always a body off affair as the tiny aluminium lift up grill behind the rear window was for mice and leaves and an oil top up only. Boot space was surprisingly large though. 4) Special mention must go to the pop up headlights. When they worked (once I think) it was comical. Either both would come and only one would come down, or one would pop up and not the other, or even more comically one would come up and a short time later the other would. 'Flashing' people was not really a sport I could enter into seriously. On mine - it's still there - I had a fan switch fitted underneath the steering wheel on the right - if you look the car up (Green Venturi UK) you will see lots and lots of pictures of it look for the switch - it prevented overheating. The car was originally A300VEN then when I had it I changed it to R3 PPB. TVR vs Venturi? Sorry but I have a Porsche now and thats just better - although everyone seems to have one now - not for the faint hearted - but give Oselli a ring first!!!! My car, as I have seen, was last on sale for £48K (UK) and had undergone a complete transformation - the orange switch is still there though. One last anecdote - I had gone to Prestbury hillclimb ans was surprised to see a roped off corner where I think there about six other Venturi's. I popped under the barrier and went up to a guy and said 'I've got one of these!" To my utter surprise he said "Is it a green one?" of course I said "Yes" and asked how he could have known - apparently the Venturi Club of Great Britain (I didn't even know there was one) had been trying to trace. He then asked if I could go and get it where I said unfortunately not as it is broken. And he said "Yes they do do that!" Lastly I used to live next door to Richard Hammond before he lived in Ross and he asked if he could borrow it - I wasn't there when it was picked up or brought back and of course it came back with a blown turbo - having seen the footage of the 'race' which if I had known about wouldn't have let it go out - I can tell you they had blown the turbo before they even started!!!!! The Venturi is certainly a rarity - and was in the end far less entertaining than it should and could have been - and not a patch on the TVR for drama which was surprisingly flawless right up to the point you find yourself in a 150MPH helicopter police chase when all you did was very innocently go down the shops for a pint of milk!!! Good luck with whatever you go for.

​@@nelsonclub7722 thanks for the Venturi story. This brought back some memories for me. My Uncle once owned the slightly earlier version, I think it would have been a 1988 F plate model, it was on a private number plate in bright red. I believe your model which was on Top Gear was a facelifted version of this model, but more or less the same shape. I was only 11/12 at the time (this would have been around 1990, possibly '91) not long after I started high school) and one day my aunty came to pick me up after school. I was beyond excited at being met by this supercar, to see it driving towards me and I knew I'd be getting into it! But, typically, no one else was really around at the time to witness this monumental (for me) event, which would have boosted my school cred no end as it looked rather like a Ferrari and bright red too! I recall the cream leather interior and I could barely see above the tall wood trimmed dash, the smooth turbo V6 engine whooshing us along. I have a photo of the car somewhere taken outside our house. Oh and a little connection in our stories; you mentioned Ross-on-Wye (before Hammond moved there) well that is where this story occurred; I grew up in Ross and went to school there.

awesome! great info thanks. I'd imagine an A610 would fall into the 'joyous when it works' category too 😆@@nelsonclub7722