S7TT

^^^what is that in your avatar? It reminds me of the Veyron.

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well it IS bunch of guys standing around playing with their balls and stroking their shafts~ Heretic

car lover !!

Mine the Apollo (Gumpert)...hehe....

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I'd chose a Z4M Coupe over my left nut any day of the damned week. - millmAn

idin

always like it but i heard that it has bad handling

porsche944

You spelt "Referring" in your sig wrong.

I like it. (the car)

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"I've been tweaking cars since before you were an itch in your daddy's pants. "- Monkeymod

svspeedy

But it's not a serial car, it can't compete with Veyron or Enzo or CGT...
There are lots of cars made for racing with more power.
I like it but... it's not the same

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"As long as they keep my 911 I'll be happy til I die". - monkeyfkker
We will always remember you!!!

wanna koenigsegg

Around a track it would probablybe faster than the veyron, the enzo and cgt probably not but veyron most probably.

parko1990

Damn, true...I was pissed off. *Changing now*

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"Men with guts attack those corners!" ~ Keiichi Tsuchiya

eX-pRo

try the speed 12 with GT spec (speed12 W112 BHG)... it got 11 and HALF STARS in its rating from EVO magazine!! WOWOWOWOWOW!!! what a car...
but it sucks in GT4...
and J.C. once said this is more a spaceship for world war againts mars than a car... well, its not a car, so dont worry...

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That's cause i don't pack heat..I bring fire. --Driftster

pieman101

Not it wouldnt, its a old style TVR without ABS and the sagaris was the first tvr that didnt spin out cornering at high speeds. The enzo would beat it hands down

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I Dont Think, I Post

Venom 1000

this car is brute power and i dont think it was ever intended to handle well...

Juggernaut

I am typing the evo article on the Speed Twelve. Hopefully it will clear many questions from those who are interested. I tried to find the article from the only place on the web where it's available but that site is down. Enjoy

A TVR TOO FAR

HARRY METCALFE

So let's cut to the chase: just how much horsepower did the road-going Cerbera Speed Twelve actually have? I'm asking Andy,John Ravenschroft's assistant at the legendary engine shop at TVR. It's a question that leads to a lot of shuffling feet and dodged answers because , as it turns out, they never really officially measured the maximum horsepower of a Speed Twelve engine.
The one time they tried to measure it, TVR's 1000bhp engine dyno threw a bit of a wobbler...

The Cerbera Speed Twelve's 7.7-litre V12 engine was actually two sixes joined at the hip with a special engine block, all of it fabricated by TVR itself. It worked well, too- the race engines have proved reliable after several seasons of racing with original blocks and cranks. But then the race engines never produced anything like the horsepower of the road cars. They had to breath through restrictors in race form, limiting power to a piffling 660-680bhp; girl's stuff compared with the road car.

When the roadgoing Speed Twelve was developed, the restrictors went in the bin allowing the mighty engine to gorge on enough air to reach its full,extraordinary potential. For development purposes the engineers took advantage of the fact that the engine was a pair of straight-sixes with two seperate ECUs controlling spark and fuel. This meant they could set them independently on the dyno . On special occasions , though , they'd let the engine run as a "twelve" and checked that it all worked together in some sort of noisy harmony.
Only once did they try to see what would happen under full power... The V12 was wound round to 5000rpm, then 5500rpm, then 57... and BANG! The input shaft to the dyno-the dyno rated at 1000bhp - snapped, unable to handle the torque the engine was kicking out . It was quite a big bang when 660lb ft of torque did its thing, apparently , and it meant that a true figure for maximum power from the V12 would never be known.

Peter Wheeler later points out that if you add together the two maximum power readings obtained for the left and right cylinder banks, you get to a giddy total horsepower figure of 940bhp, and that's at just 7200rpm.

All that untamed horsepower in a car weighing just 1150kg. The 627bhp
Mclaren F1 would never have stood a chance...

Bcak at the start of the project in 1998, it had seemed such a good idea to make a V12 TVR flagship racer, build a few road-going versions for the old psychopath with enough money to pay the 160,000 GBP list price, and allow TVR to clean up on the race track and the road. That was the theory - until Peter wheeler first drove a prototype home. "I knew within 300 yards that it was a silly idea," he says. "Over 900bhp in
a car weighing just over a ton is plainly ridiculous on the road.

"It didn't matter what gear you were in, you just couldn't get to use the power. There's no tyre produced that can cope with all that power .Even the racers struggle and they have tyres that are twice as wide and sticky; and anyway, they only had 680bhp to deal with . At the end of the day it turned out to be completely pointless as a road car."

I should remind you at this point that Peter Wheeler ought to be the ideal customer for such a car, being a highly likable psychopath who relaxes at the weekend by racing 450bhp, 870kg TVR Tuscan racers. Surely it couldn't be that scary.

"No, it wasn't scary really. I drove it to my home some 40 miles away and my biggest worry was that the car only had a tiny bag-tank fitted. I reckoned the fuel consumption would be pretty horrendous so I was more worried that it would run out of fuel , as it happened i did notice i could tramline for England though. It was bloody hot in there as well - I found it best to drive through town with the doors open. A 940bhp engine makes a lot of heat,you know..."

On a more serious note, Wheeler adds :"The trouble with all these high-powered cars being developed today, together with the Cerbera Speed Twelve is that you can't use the power. With some manufacturers, the only way they can produce such powerful cars is to develop electronis traction control to limit the power you get to use. So what's the point of having it in first place if the electronics don't let you use it?"

But not even TVR can resist traction control systems for ever. Wheeler admits that his engineers are currently developing TVR's first electronic traction control for the new 440R, though it won' cut in until the car's sliding already and even then very progressively.
"The other trouble with today's cars," he continues, "is that they weigh too much, so manufacturers have to go on adding more power just to stand still in the performance stakes. The Speed Twelve is the same weight as our other cars, so all that extra power could go to make the car quicker , if only you can get the traction to transmit it to the road and that's the limiting factor at the moment. The Speed Twelve has been useful, though, for developing components for our more extreme cars - its diff and drive-shafts have gone onto the 440R , for example. It also tested the idea of using an alloy honeycomb floor that was part of the chassis structure, which has proved immensely stiff and will be seen on future TVRs."

One thing that won't be happening is a Cerbera Speed Twelve rolling up outside the offices of EVO , or any other magazine for that matter, for an official road test. Wheeler doesn't want to be responsible for the possible consequences." I never really liked the look of the car eit
her," he adds. "It was designed by the race engineers and it shows. The race regs at the time stated the front screen had to be 80 percent
of overall width of the whole car and that didn't help the way it eventually looked. It's starting to grow on me now, but it'll never be a favourite."

The exact number of Speed Twelves built so far by TVR remains as elusive as the peak power figure; they have produced a limited number,
that's for sure, but any talk of producing one or two a month is confined to history.

As Wheeler remarks with a trademark grin ,"If someone comes to us and still wants to buy one I can usually talk them out of it, given time"

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Because a blown Duke won't look like it's going to eat your children.-Ravenous on the Mammut 2000

car lover !!

Good one Juggernaut....good hero.....a ultimate pusher...
Good post BTW.....

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I'd chose a Z4M Coupe over my left nut any day of the damned week. - millmAn

E-TEC 4

So the TVR Cerbera is in a sense like a W12?

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NOS Energy Drink: Good for the body, not for the ride.

Juggernaut

Thank you this makes it all the more worthwhile

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Because a blown Duke won't look like it's going to eat your children.-Ravenous on the Mammut 2000

vmax

i saw one at Goodwood Festival of Speed, its huge, very imposing and the styling works better in real life rather than in pictures