TVR stole all the attention at the 1996 British motor show with the shock unveiling of the 7/12, a crazy creation even by the British sports car maker’s mad standards.
Based on the newly introduced Cerbera, a rival to the Porsche 911 and Toyota Supra, with its fantastic 4.2-litre V8 turned into a 7.7-litre V12, it weighed less than 1000kg – thanks to a composite body shell, a steel tubular spaceframe chassis with an integrated roll cage and a spartan interior – while making 660bhp and 660lb ft of torque.
“I’m very serious about this car, said TVR chairman Peter Wheeler. “We are going to go GT racing with this car – and to enter, those cars have got to be road cars.”
The GT racing in question was the top-line BPR Global GT Series, whose 1996 grid was studded with such GT1-category stars as the 911, McLaren F1, Dodge Viper, Ferrari F40, Lotus Esprit and Jaguar XJ220.
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“It’s not intended to be a sophisticated road car,” said Wheeler. Indeed, he seemed wary of his creation, adding: “We’re not going to sell to any rich kid that can afford it. It will be priced so that not too many people want to buy it.” His target was £130,000, or £251,300 in today’s money.
“Because it’s not for consumption by a wide band of customers, we can afford to be wild,” Wheeler added of the ‘eye-catching’ in-house styling.
A year later, our Steve Cropley headed up to Blackpool to “fan the flames” left by the bombshell news of what had since been renamed the Speed 12. After all, Woking’s legendary 240mph F1 had a 20% inferior power-to-weight ratio. So 0-100mph would take only 6.0sec.
It was enough to send you to outer space, to take your brain to another dimension. Which is why deposit holders included Keith Flint and Liam Howlett of The Prodigy…
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It may have been undrivable and unreliable, but at least back then TVR was capable of building some sort of a car and persuading a few hairbrained enthusiast to actually buy the thing!