Classic pearls of the future - TVR Cerbera
04/19/2016
When Peter Wheeler presented the TVR Cerbera at the Birmingham Motor Show in 1994, it was more than just a bang for the buck. It was the third new development under his aegis, but certainly also the most surprising.
The sports car broke with some of the traditions that had been adhered to for years. As a coupé, it was closed, something that had not been seen at TVR since the Tasmin. It had four seats (2+2 configuration), which had also only ever been seen in the Tasmin. The most spectacular innovation, however, was the fact that it no longer had the Rover V8 in the front, but a V8 engine developed in-house, the AJP engine. TVR feared that the Rover takeover by BMW would mean that Rover engines would no longer be available and engaged racing engineer Al Meiling to develop a sports car engine that could also have been a racing car engine. The design therefore corresponded in many respects to the Formula 1 engines commonly used at the time.
The 4.2-liter V8, which weighed just over 120 kg, produced 360 hp; later, the output even increased to 420 hp with 4.5 liters. But even the 360 hp accelerated the Cerbera to almost 300 km/h, making it the fastest TVR to date. With an unladen weight of 1100 kg (factory specification), the fast coupé accelerated to 100 km/h in around four seconds.
The rest of the design dispensed with experiments. Like the models before it, a plastic body sat on a tubular frame. The body itself looked like a stretched Chimaera with a coupé roof and extra-long doors, which were of course also necessary to allow the rear passengers into the car.
The interior was certainly futuristic, with the unorthodox instrument arrangement behind the steering wheel and the bulges around the cardan/gearbox tunnel.
The first customer Cerberas were delivered in 1996, the styling was revised in 2000 and the last Cerbera left the factory around 2004. A total of just under 1600 examples are said to have been built, not all of which impressed with their reliability, but certainly with excellent driving performance, an unusual design and a special-sounding engine.
More classic gems can be found in the dedicated theme channel.
And if anyone wants to provide us with a TVR Cerbera for a driving report, we are all ears ...
