Video: TVR Tuscan and TVR Sagaris with LS Corvette engine

Video: TVR Tuscan and TVR Sagaris with LS Corvette engine

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How has to be a car? The question is good most of all for vintage cars: restored or preserved? Some “masterpieces” at Villa d’Este or Pebble Beach International Concours were very deeply restored. It seems they exit the assembly line one hour before (60 or 80 years old cars) so they’re beautiful but became a false. That’s why I prefer “preserved”. So I can “touch” the real car and feel (and see) all its story.

The car of the video is a TVR Tuscan Mk1 with a LS Corvette engine installed (note the carburettor cylinder “hole” on the front bonnet and the typical sound). Many owners suffer the lack of reliability of the Speed-6 engine (and everyone to whom you’ll ask some advices will tell you that you might at least look for a 2003 unit). The owner of the car in the video took an extreme decision: he abandoned the TVR Speed-6 engine for a more reliable one.

Was it “licit”? Of course this doesn’t mean any vilification of any V8 engine. I can only give MY opinion (but I did not live such an experience). I think that every car must be preserved as totally original. Maybe I would have looked for another more reliable unit of the TVR Speed-6 because this is ITS engine and TVR didn’t offer officially the LS V8 as an option. Maybe, as many enthusiast say, as currently there are several conversions on TVR Cerberas, TVR Tuscans and TVR Sagaris, if TVR factory were still “alive” staff would surely offered this engine.

In the following video, the gorgeous sound of a TVR Sagaris with LS7 engine (it’s installed in the Corvette Z06). This kind of conversion was already reviewed HERE and HERE. The car is surely stunning, surely extremely fast, surely extrordinary. But I feel I could consider it only a “tuned” TVR Sagaris, even if a “better” TVR Sagaris. The car is not original anymore.

Do you think different? Leave a comment!

4 COMMENTS

  1. I have a rare pic and spec sheet of the last ever TVR built, the 2006 tvr typhoon, just click on my name which will send you to my site where i have the specs and the pic waiting for you, please feature it because i love your site and tvr's, thank you.

  2. I fully agree that it is the Speed Six engine giving the Sagaris (and other T-Chassis models) its typical unique character. The LS engines might be more reliable, but if I would buy a Corvette if I was looking for this feature.
    A well sorted Speed Six engine is one of the most brutal and puristic engines one could have in a street legal car.
    I simply love its sound and brute force.

  3. Indeed, a Corvette LS engine sound very cool, but not in a TVR. One of the things that caracterised the last generation TVR's, is the remarkable Speed Six sound. So with an engine like this it's not a TVR anymore, in my opnion.
    Besides, I can still not imagine why Smolenski does not want to use the Speed Six. The engine already exists, it only needs improvements, of wich smoe are already in development with companies like Racing Green TVR.