DRIVING THE ORIGINAL

In 2005, John Barker sampled TVR’S only road-going Speed 12

IT HAD LOOKED LIKE NO ONE OUTSIDE THE factory would ever get to drive the only road-going TVR Cerbera Speed 12. But a few years after the prototype was parked up in a quiet corner of the Blackpool works, it was up for sale. The eventual buyer went through a vetting process that included a meeting with Wheeler. He said it felt like asking for Wheeler’s daughter’s hand in marriage.

When the deal was done, the rebuild began. The neglected Speed 12 had been pillaged for parts for the race versions in the British GT Championship. Now the process was reversed, including fitting carbonfibre bodywork from one of the racers. The 7.7-litre V12 got ‘soft’ cams, dropping the claimed output by 80bhp… to ‘just’ 880bhp.

The opportunity to feel what almost 900bhp feels like in a car weighing little more than that in kilograms came on an overcast day at Silverstone in early 2005 ( evo 079). The noise was glorious: heavy, complex and characterful like a Spitfire’s Merlin V12. The tyres were, um, sub-optimal, being ‘just an old worn set we had in the workshop’. Having rumbled away on little more than tickover, the most tentative of squeezes of the throttle had the rear juddering with wheelspin, and when I hefted the wheel and turned in for the first corner, the rear tried to overtake the front.

A few more laps in and the tyres finally felt round and grippy. Ensuring the car was straight, I nailed it out of an uphill, second-gear corner. The shove was phenomenal, dizzying, and grabbing third and fourth the Speed 12 lunged for the horizon like a rocket sled. Wow. And that was using 5000rpm. All 880bhp arrived at about 7250rpm. Courage up, I let it rev out down the Hangar Straight and… it wouldn’t rev much past 5750rpm. An ECU problem was cutting power just when the engine seemed to be really getting going, so I never got to feel if the Speed 12 really could shame a Mclaren F1.