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Man Maths: TVR T350

6 days ago

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Writer:

Dan Prosser | Ti co-founder

Date:

1 February 2025

To a 15-year-old car nut growing up in a dreary suburb of Bristol, an early 2000s TVR was just about the most exciting manmade object going. I was obsessed with those weird Blackpool sports cars as a boy, dragging parents or grandparents to the British motor show in London or Birmingham so I could gawp at them.

They were styled like alien spacecraft, had completely bonkers interiors, seemed to go like stink (the performance figures printed in the back pages of magazines said TVRs were always faster than the equivalent Porsche, which really mattered) and they were British. Nothing, for me, even came close.

There was already something unusual and exotic about the 1990s Cerbera and Chimaera, but the Tuscan arrived at the end of that decade with even more outlandish styling and I was hooked. I like the Tamora that landed a couple of years later, too, but when I first spotted the T350 on the front of a magazine in our local corner shop (remember when that was how we all saw new cars for the very first time?), I almost burst out of my skin with excitement.

The prettiest TVR? I think so. I saw one on the road the other day (full credit to its owner for using a TVR through a grim British winter, by the way). It was going the other direction on the motorway so it came and went in a flash, but it still looked wonderful to me. The T350 later spawned the Sagaris, probably the company’s wildest-looking car, and while I have driven one of those, I haven’t even sat inside a T350.

By the way, mine would be a T350c, the coupé, rather than a T350t with the targa roof.

Now, it’s true – TVRs of this (and probably any other) era were not exactly built like vaults. It’s also true that the Speed Six engine, TVR’s own, can be problematic, but talk to TVR owners and specialists today and they’ll tell you that so many of the faults that plagued these cars when new have since been rectified. I suspect you’ll still need to be a patient and understanding owner if TVR life isn’t going to drive you around the bend, but the horror stories do seem to have been overstated.

This T350c was recently sold by Bonhams|Cars Online for £30,750

I enjoyed that Sagaris but wasn’t blown away by it. This was more than a decade ago, though, and I strongly believe one of those or a T350 would be way more enjoyable to me now, a real antidote to so many present day sports cars that have become so terribly concerned with going faster and faster and faster that they forget to check the driver’s having fun too. Lightweight build, a potent naturally aspirated engine, manual gearbox, classic front-engined, rear-drive layout – sounds fun to me.

At 1250kg and with 350bhp, the T350 has a power-to-weight ratio of 280bhp/tonne, which is pretty much slap bang in the middle of my ideal range for a road car. That’s about the same as a new BMW M3.

You can pick a T350 up for less than £35,000 nowadays. It’s not the route to go down if you’re after an everyday sports car (although I can confirm at least one T350 owner uses theirs through winter…) but as something a bit offbeat to keep at home for very occasional use, what’s going to feel more special for the money?

Photography courtesy of Bonhams|Cars Online

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