- 56
- The Tri-State Area
After some success in GT racing - not only through its own one-make Tuscan series, but a GT2 race based on its Cerbera coupe - low volume British marque TVR decided it wanted to take a crack at the top with a GT1 machine.
This category was intended to allow manufacturers to showcase their fastest road cars on the race track, which saw brands like Ferrari, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Lotus, McLaren, Porsche, and Venturi bringing supercars to fight it out. What a time to be alive.
TVR didn't exactly have the budget to compete with these brands, but nonetheless set about creating a GT1 car - loosely based on the Cerbera GT2, but comprising a new spaceframe chassis and an absolute monster of an engine.
Originally unveiled in 1996 as Project 7/12, the car was vaguely recognisable as a TVR Cerbera, but instead of a large (and old) V8 under the nose it - as the name suggested - came with an enormous V12. It was, in fact, 7.7-litres of engine, created from a pair of the company's AJP6 "Speed Six" units.
Sadly, by the time TVR had managed to get the car - now called "Speed 12" - ready for the race track, the GT1 class had turned into an arms race among German manufacturers who were a little better at reading between the lines of the rulebook and had the biggest budgets imaginable.
Mercedes and Porsche both created outright homologation specials - race cars with the vaguest of nods to road legality and sold in highly limited numbers - that eclipsed anything else out there. Toyota and Nissan were in on the action too, building race cars with a single, fully road legal and registered example each as they sought to only race at Le Mans.
That left the TVR obsolete almost overnight, and the car was reworked for the domestic British GT Championship and more GT2 class racing. However the brand still wanted to make a road version of the car (and had taken orders, at £245,000 a pop!) in the spirit of the rules, and created a new body for the prototype machine in 2000.
Coming in at about a ton in weight, and still with the 7.7-litre V12 - officially estimated at 840hp, after TVR had to test the two banks separately when the whole unit shredded a dyno rated to 1000hp+ - driving the rear wheels, the car was now called the Cerbera Speed 12, and posted some pretty heady figures on paper: 0-60mph in around 3 seconds, and a 240mph+ top speed matched the McLaren F1.
Company owner Peter Wheeler took the opportunity to drive the car home one night, and returned the next day to cancel the project. Describing it as "unusuable" and "ridiculous", he felt that the car was simply too dangerous to use on the road and the company's reputation would be tanked if it went ahead with such an irresponsible venture.
The car continued to race in British GT for a couple more seasons, claiming a handful of wins, before the whole Speed 12 program was ended. TVR was left with three different chassis of varying completeness, which it consolidated into two road cars (known as W112BHG and W312BFV, each bearing its original 2000 registration plate), with only BHG keeping the original 7.7-litre V12. However in both cases the car now sported new, race-derived bodywork.
Wheeler subsequently did sell BHG to someone who he personally vetted as capable of driving the car but their identity has never been revealed. It has been sold on twice since then, most recently in May 2023 where it set a record as the most expensive auction price for a TVR in history at £601,500.
As nominated here, the TVR Cerbera Speed 12 is in its original roadgoing body and appeared in this form in Gran Turismo 3 (replacing the Speed 12 Concept of Gran Turismo 2) through Gran Turismo 6.
