Nick Hall Freelance motoring journalist in the UK
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Big Toys for Big Boys
Effectively the superbike of the four-wheeled world, a TVR is a hairy-chested plaything for those with the disposable income to spend more than £40,000 on ther leisure time. Blackpool-based TVR has always had a simple goal: supercar power and muscle car attitude at less than half the cost of a serious Porsche or Ferrari.To purchase a TVR is to buy into a culture of opposite lock, powerslides and blasting down winding, traffic-free roads late at night with wide-open eyes and sweaty palms. They’re hard to drive and demand respect, and the never-ending appeal lies in the challenge. Owning a TVR could be like climbing Everest every time you leave the garage: it’s no easy thrill.
The exterior styling epitomises the brutal character of the car, with muscular bulges fore and aft. Looney Tunes used an S version for the animated film Back in Action and the cartoon rockets hardly looked out of place on this bohemoth’s flanks.
Not everyone will love the in your face styling, but TVR has never been about the masses. These cars appeal to a niche, a hardy bunch that crave an expression of their thirst for driving. Almost everything looks ordinary next to this fibreglass creation and that aerodynamic front end is yet another example of a novel approach. It takes wrenches to get to the engine, but the fixed fibreglass panel is a stressed member and contributes to the overall chassis stiffness.
Changes from the original include fared in headlights to further reduce drag at the front end, a lower spoiler and light clusters that now fit flush at the rear. They’re minor tweaks, but the Tuscan is so far ahead of its time it hardly needs a major facelift and the changes are purely for the added performance.
Any production TVR could have rolled out of the most extravagant design studios in the world, and the tactile and beautiful finish of even the smallest details are unique.
Even Ferraris use plastic Fiat components, but the interior of a TVR is automotive sculpture. Extravagant swathes of leather combine with all-enveloping seats and machined aluminium switches that work in their own unique fashion. It took hours to figure out the indicators, fans and dashboard - a scrolling electronic readout that offers more information than the average F1 team would require.
Even getting in is a special experience, there aren’t any locks and a keyfob combines with a discreet button under the mirror to pop the door open.
TVRs are still produced by hand and the engine bears the initials of the man who assembled it. The production is set to increase, however, as company is going global.
The automotive industry now has its own Roman Abramovich, maverick young Russian Nikolai Smolenski who had run a national bank, officially become Russia’s youngest millionaire and then shelled out a rumoured £15 million for his own sportscar company.
His first act was to cease production while they ironed out reliability problems that TVR has a less enviable reputation for. Now each car will come with a three-year warranty, which is almost unheard of in the sportscar world, and it’s a brave statement of intent if nothing else.
A devoted following of British lunatics that dine on nails and broken glass and wouldn’t drive anything else just won’t be enough to hit this new man’s targets. So the Blackpool company, for the first time in its history, has also softened the edges on the new Tuscan 2.
That’s a relative term, though, it is still an animal. The 3.6-litre inline Six cylinder, that kicks out 350bhp through the rear wheels, is the tamest powerplant in the TVR line-up. The four-litre Tuscan S and Sagaris both manage 400bhp and both are thugs, but this car is more than enough for most of us.
It hammers to 60mph in a spine-distorting 4.4s and tops out somewhere on the dark side of180mph after exhausting the five-speed gearbox. But the numbers don’t do justice to the sheer violence involved, as there is no traction control, the blaring noise permeates through every part of the cabin and every rut and imperfection in the tarmac resonates back through the steering wheel.
Driving this car in isolation it’s hard to believe it’s a softer version of the Tuscan Mk1, but the engineers have relaxed the front end a little to file down the teeth on this jagged blade. When pushing hard it’s still vital to stay smooth to get the best from this basic and aggressively tuned chassis and if you don’t respect it can bite hard.
Virtually every manufacturer, even the likes of Porsche, dial a certain amount of understeer into their chassis as this helps prevent spins that can kill the customer. TVR has resisted this trend, though, and insists on producing pin-sharp cars that retain all of the hard-edged character of supercars of the old world. It cuts into bends faster than almost any car on the market, therefore, but go in too fast and the back end will snap out of line and swing round faster than you ever imagined possible.
You’ll have to get creative with hands and feet to avoid an expensive mistakes and many TVR owners have ‘binned it’ at some point. Unlike other sportscars the Tuscan 2 doesn’t just go fast. It provides thrills at all speeds and all the tools to achieve the speed, but you’ll really have to learn its nuances to unlock this car’s potential.
On a dry day, in competent hands, a Tuscan 2 will eat a Porsche Boxster or any other mid-ranged roadster alive. Unlike the Porsche, though, it demands total focus all of the time and is not the kind of car you’d want to commute in.
But for a hairy chested weekend rollercoaster ride, you won’t find any more fun on four wheels. For those of us that can’t spend every day on Everest, an hour in our TVR might just about make up for it.
Evolutionary Steps
The differences between the Mark 1 Tuscan and new car are subtle, on the outside at least. Fared in and simplified headlights at the front end and reprofiled rear lights that now fit flush to the bodywork are two of the minor external visual cues that this is a facelifted car, and the easiest sign is the completely new interior.
Most of the work that has gone into the new Tuscan 2 won’t catch the eye at all, but they do make it a far better car. A new aerodynamic configuration is just the start of the work that has gone in to improve the Tuscan’s stability at speed and predictability round corners.
TVR imported the suspension set-up from the race-bred T350C and the kinder steering system that takes just a little of the nervous edge out of the car during normal progress. The front end is softer, a little more pliable than the original bare-chested brute of a car, but the rear can still snap round in an instant if provoked.
There are also hundreds of other changes, ones that won’t make the spec sheet. During hot weather testing TVR found room for improvement in almost every area, particularly reliability. It was more a question of repackaging, moving a wiring loom 5mm to prevent overheating and re-engineering some basic components, among many other small touches, but the sum of the changes are far greater than their parts.
As the 3.6-litre engine is a constantly evolving and improving animal, too, it’s more than likely Tuscan 2s a year from now will feel even better than the current model. Unlike a big manufacturer, TVR doesn’t need to stick to an exact spec throughout the product life. That is the advantage of the hand-building process.
It still caught me and sent me into a sideways half-spin during my test, but it’s still easier to handle than the original Tuscan, which was a fragile and nervous beast. It should last longer, as well, thanks to the extensive reliability work going on at Blackpool, and could just about make it on the mass market. TVR has only trimmed the Tuscan’s claws a little and it can still slash rivals to ribbons.