Emerging Classic
The TVR Cerbera, a flawed yet brilliant creation by an iconic British marque.
Not many people buy a mildly moribund and financially-ailing sports car manufacturer pretty much by mistake. Even fewer do that and then proceed to turn it into an icon through the dogged application of maverick ideas, but this is precisely what Peter Wheeler did with TVR. First he got well acquainted with the factory by having his car serviced there, and through the resulting friendships he learned of the company’s parlous financial state. He’d recently sold the company which made his fortune (which made desalination equipment for the North Sea oil industry) and became interested in bringing financial assistance to the TVR business. This ultimately ended in him buying the thing outright, and the point at which it all came together for his endeavour was 1996’s stunning Cerbera.
Since its 1946 birth, the Blackpool-based car maker had produced some notable sports cars, and Wheeler was a fan because he owned a Taimar Turbo. He purchased TVR in 1981, and for ten years steered it gradually away from the brink of financial disaster by building machines with tuned Rover V8 power and styling which harked back to its successful 1970s creations.
Then in 1991 the Griffith appeared. Yes, it was a twoseat, open-top sports car like previous TVRs, but the design was a completely new direction for the company. Smooth, rounded and untroubled by fripperies such as visible bumpers, it was staggeringly elegant. Wheeler was pointing confidently to the future. He followed it up the next year with a more aggressive model, the Chimaera. TVR was finally demanding to be taken seriously.
The Chimaera was a creature of Greek myth, a hybrid that breathed fire. For his third model, Wheeler invoked the name of Chimaera’s brother Cerberus – a multi-headed monster tasked with guarding the Ancient Greek hell. While the Griffith set out TVR’s new design language and the Chimaera developed it, Wheeler’s full ambition was realised in the Cerbera – a TVR road car with a solid roof, equipped with rear seats and powered by engines created in-house. The engine was because, spooked by BMW’s ownership of Rover Group, Wheeler had decided to do something very few specialist manufacturers dared to, and commissioned the development of two entirely new engines by independent engineer Alwyn Melling. The first to appear was dubbed AJP8, and it achieved instant notoriety for the sheer power and grunt it produced. Wheeler’s concept was to produce a V8 road engine that could be sold to race car manufacturers. Melling achieved spectacular results by copying what was going on in Formula One at the time and adapting it for road use. In 1999 a 24-valve straight six engine – known as the Speed Six – appeared. Both were available in the Cerbera.
Everything about the Cerbera