Buying Guide
The last TVR ever made was also the most polished and most wackily styled. Here’s how to get one of the good ones from its tragically short production run
TVR Sagaris
‘190mph and 3.6 seconds to 60mph are still at supercar levels today’
The Sagaris – in many ways a T350 (itself based on the Tamora) turned up to 11 – was the last car that TVR made before it closed in 2006. Some described it as a ‘race car for the road’ and in terms of its outright performance, as well as its almost uncomfortably firm ride, it really was.
But while headline figures such as a 190mph top speed and 0-60mph time of 3.6 seconds are still at supercar levels by today’s standards, the Sagaris still did things in a typically TVR manner. For starters, there was the mad exterior, featuring cuts, slashes, Perspex wings and other details straight out of the back page of a ten-year old’s maths book. A typical TVR interior of swooping swathes of leather was hardly conventional either. TVR’s old-school touch is most obvious in what isn’t on the Sagaris, however. There’s no traction control, stability control, ABS or even front airbags. The ever-charismatic Peter Wheeler variously claimed that this was because such features encouraged complacency or robbed a certain purity from the experience, but few were fooled – it was simply because TVR couldn’t afford them.
Today, enthusiasts hold the Sagaris high in their estimations for offering immense modern performance in such an analogue package – oh, and that lack of kit helped to keep the weight down to an almost absurd 1078kg.
With production stopped after just two years, TVR only got around to making about 200 cars and only in one iteration – there’s no spec to choose from other than the colour scheme. Nearly all of those cars are in the UK, so finding one isn’t as hard as you might think – here’s how to buy the best one you can.