Echidna roof (Sprint article)
Discussion
To the owners defence, the roof, interior, wheels and paint look very good.
In my opinion TVR made a good bit of effort to simplify and smooth the design of the PW era cars. Hidden doorbuttons, no antenna and no petrol filler cap. A smoothly shaped body. No windtunnels, just classic design. Any mod that disturb this gets my thumb down... thats my opinion, and I wont be shouting it anymore since it seems we are very divided in this matter.
I have to admit though, my old car, a Mercedes 190E 2.6 I modified to some extent. Clear indicators, new grille, two small visible exhaust tips instead of hidden... One day I realized that the people who know these cars or cars in general they will straight away know that these are your mods and not a special edition or rare AMG version. People who dont know these cars will never know because they dont care, its just an old merc. In the end I brought it close to standard look with the old orange indicators and standard grille and enjoyed it for what it was.
I'll shut up now
In my opinion TVR made a good bit of effort to simplify and smooth the design of the PW era cars. Hidden doorbuttons, no antenna and no petrol filler cap. A smoothly shaped body. No windtunnels, just classic design. Any mod that disturb this gets my thumb down... thats my opinion, and I wont be shouting it anymore since it seems we are very divided in this matter.
I have to admit though, my old car, a Mercedes 190E 2.6 I modified to some extent. Clear indicators, new grille, two small visible exhaust tips instead of hidden... One day I realized that the people who know these cars or cars in general they will straight away know that these are your mods and not a special edition or rare AMG version. People who dont know these cars will never know because they dont care, its just an old merc. In the end I brought it close to standard look with the old orange indicators and standard grille and enjoyed it for what it was.
I'll shut up now
OleVix said:
To the owners defence, the roof, interior, wheels and paint look very good.
In my opinion TVR made a good bit of effort to simplify and smooth the design of the PW era cars. Hidden doorbuttons, no antenna and no petrol filler cap. A smoothly shaped body. No windtunnels, just classic design. Any mod that disturb this gets my thumb down.
Pretty much this anything that's bolted on just for the sake of it detracts a lot from the original design, and they add very little functionality never mind aesthetics, a huge wing really needed? ?In my opinion TVR made a good bit of effort to simplify and smooth the design of the PW era cars. Hidden doorbuttons, no antenna and no petrol filler cap. A smoothly shaped body. No windtunnels, just classic design. Any mod that disturb this gets my thumb down.
The colour, wheels and red roof I do like as another very similar car was posted in another thread at the same time, looked very classy.
As to hurt feelings for the owner of this particular car, and others who have had their efforts derided by other's, I really don't see why there is so much anger over comments on what is after all just lumps of metal, its not as if anyone is slagging off your wife and kid's as being ugly, huge over reaction.
Edited to add
If your making changes to suit or impress other's then I suggest your doing it for the wrong reason in the first place.
Edited by rigga on Wednesday 16th July 06:50
Hi All,
Thought I would drop a comment on here as I actually own the 'Echidna' car and was responsible for its annihilation ;-)
Firstly, I take no offence at the comments made people about the car as as someone has previously mentioned it is 'each to their own'. I do though make no apologies for putting my ideas into action and doing what I like with my canvas.
To the OP - apologies for the late response but I was blissfully unaware hat this conversation existed until today and have joined PH to respond to you... I didn't actually have the roof shaped specifically but the new roof that I had fitted certainly seemed to look like it was more curved. The original fittings were used for the roof.
Anyway, if you wanted to have further pictures to help your investigation of this I am happy to supply as it may be the paint lines have changed since the full respray, but given the time I can't remember tbh!
For those of you who were commenting that I may have traded in my Corsa for the dream car, please be assured that this isn't my dream car (and I have never quoted that anyway!!) Moreover it was actually just another project.
I would hope if you guys see the car about that you aprpciate the effort I have put into this rather than whether I did what you personally liked; of course if we all liked the same thing the car world would be very boring indeed :-)
Anyone who is interested in what I did with the car though feel free to message!
Thought I would drop a comment on here as I actually own the 'Echidna' car and was responsible for its annihilation ;-)
Firstly, I take no offence at the comments made people about the car as as someone has previously mentioned it is 'each to their own'. I do though make no apologies for putting my ideas into action and doing what I like with my canvas.
To the OP - apologies for the late response but I was blissfully unaware hat this conversation existed until today and have joined PH to respond to you... I didn't actually have the roof shaped specifically but the new roof that I had fitted certainly seemed to look like it was more curved. The original fittings were used for the roof.
Anyway, if you wanted to have further pictures to help your investigation of this I am happy to supply as it may be the paint lines have changed since the full respray, but given the time I can't remember tbh!
For those of you who were commenting that I may have traded in my Corsa for the dream car, please be assured that this isn't my dream car (and I have never quoted that anyway!!) Moreover it was actually just another project.
I would hope if you guys see the car about that you aprpciate the effort I have put into this rather than whether I did what you personally liked; of course if we all liked the same thing the car world would be very boring indeed :-)
Anyone who is interested in what I did with the car though feel free to message!
Nthom1tr said:
Hi All,
Thought I would drop a comment on here as I actually own the 'Echidna' car and was responsible for its annihilation ;-)
Firstly, I take no offence at the comments made people about the car as as someone has previously mentioned it is 'each to their own'. I do though make no apologies for putting my ideas into action and doing what I like with my canvas.
To the OP - apologies for the late response but I was blissfully unaware hat this conversation existed until today and have joined PH to respond to you... I didn't actually have the roof shaped specifically but the new roof that I had fitted certainly seemed to look like it was more curved. The original fittings were used for the roof.
Anyway, if you wanted to have further pictures to help your investigation of this I am happy to supply as it may be the paint lines have changed since the full respray, but given the time I can't remember tbh!
For those of you who were commenting that I may have traded in my Corsa for the dream car, please be assured that this isn't my dream car (and I have never quoted that anyway!!) Moreover it was actually just another project.
I would hope if you guys see the car about that you aprpciate the effort I have put into this rather than whether I did what you personally liked; of course if we all liked the same thing the car world would be very boring indeed :-)
Anyone who is interested in what I did with the car though feel free to message!
Plenty of pics and a brief description of what you have done to the car would be good please as I didn't get to read the article. Thought I would drop a comment on here as I actually own the 'Echidna' car and was responsible for its annihilation ;-)
Firstly, I take no offence at the comments made people about the car as as someone has previously mentioned it is 'each to their own'. I do though make no apologies for putting my ideas into action and doing what I like with my canvas.
To the OP - apologies for the late response but I was blissfully unaware hat this conversation existed until today and have joined PH to respond to you... I didn't actually have the roof shaped specifically but the new roof that I had fitted certainly seemed to look like it was more curved. The original fittings were used for the roof.
Anyway, if you wanted to have further pictures to help your investigation of this I am happy to supply as it may be the paint lines have changed since the full respray, but given the time I can't remember tbh!
For those of you who were commenting that I may have traded in my Corsa for the dream car, please be assured that this isn't my dream car (and I have never quoted that anyway!!) Moreover it was actually just another project.
I would hope if you guys see the car about that you aprpciate the effort I have put into this rather than whether I did what you personally liked; of course if we all liked the same thing the car world would be very boring indeed :-)
Anyone who is interested in what I did with the car though feel free to message!
Cheers,
Ged
Bring on the keyboard warriors ;-)
Here is the article text (as was sent to me) and I will put some pictures up too
Transformation of Echidna
A little background…
I have for years wanted a TVR for the simple reason that when I was a child, my friend’s dad owned a Griffith 500 that looked great and sounded brilliant. If that wasn’t enough, he used to race superbikes so knew a thing or two about fast vehicles. He only kept the car a short while, stating that it was “uncontrollable”, which immediately as a young boy meant I wanted one!
A few years have passed since then and I invested in a Chimaera 400 as a new project a couple of years ago.
With all of the cars I have owned I have named them and given that I wanted to enhance the car I decided to call her ‘Echidna’. Why Echidna? Well, in Greek mythology Chimaera is the daughter of Echidna and Echidna was known as the ‘Mother of all Monsters’. Given the childhood memories and my plans for her I thought it an apt name!
Plans for the transformation…
When buying Echidna I decided that I would try to modernise the look of the car without going down the ‘body kit’ style route and without losing her original features.
I had a think about what has become more commonplace on modern vehicles and also how I could make her look slightly more race oriented (as I have always been fascinated by the Le Mans LMGTE style cars).
The first area of research was standard modernisation of the car. I decided to have the front lights replaced to model the Tuscan style and replace the wing mirrors (which I always thought looked out of place on the car). Whilst researching this I did find that people either seem to do something completely amazing to change a TVR or try to restore to original. This worried me somewhat as I was going to attempt to go in between; not crazy but equally not original.
Having decided on the changes above I then thought about the shape of the car and how it could be made to look newer. The obvious design details that date the car are the wheels, side repeaters, door locks and the (apologies in advance!) badges.
Therefore I decided to try to change all of these areas. I did not want to lose the original Imola alloys as it would have been too easy to replace them with something after-market so decided upon having them re-sprayed. At about this time I also began to notice that many modern cars (esp. 4x4s and sports cars) have fins or vents along the wings. This seemed like an ideal way to do something different to Echidna without changing too much. I spent (literally) ages, thinking about and looking at the profile of existing vents (including those from Maserati and Range Rover) before realising that the BMW Z3 wing shape was similar to that of the TVR. I bought a used pair and created a template to offer up the side of the car. It looked like a good fit. So my plan was hatched. I would have the wings modified to hold the Z3 vents and whilst I am at it I would also include the BMW side repeaters from an M3 as they have the same shape as the vents. Better still I sourced some TVR badges to replace the (difficult to remove) BMW ones!
Finally I decided that the TVR and Chimaera badges made the car look too narrow and cluttered up the boot, so these were removed in preparation for a paint job, which immediately made the car seem wider and squatter.
I come back to the earlier LMGTE reference now… I also decided that the car needed a wing. Not because of aerodynamics but because I saw an advert featuring an Aston Martin Le Mans car in it. My mind was made up so I bought a carbon fibre wing and decided to fit it. In fairness I guess it is not everyone’s ‘cup of tea’ but I think that it has really added something to Echidna.
At this point the whole colour scheme came to mind. I used to have a Westfield that I changed to have a cream body with black wheels. I was always told that it looked good and as such I decided to go down a similar route this time with Echidna. I set about finding a dark grey, white and blood red colour combination as the design came to life in my head.
The car went away for paint and the body work to be completed and once done looked amazing. The only downside was that the interior (originally cream and biscuit) looked awful and the roof looked tatty. It was at this point my original plans changed. I was going to supercharge Echidna (Mother of all Monsters and all that). But couldn’t see how it could be seen with such a terrible interior. I decided therefore to spend the supercharger money on having the interior reupholstered and the roof replaced.
So stage two of the transformation kicked off. I spent a lot of time deliberating over the interior and decided that black on black would be best but with some tweaks to modernise. Whilst thinking of the interior an image of the interior from a Ferrari F40 kept coming into my mind (the black Alcantara and red stitching) so I decided that I wanted to do something like that. I finally decided to replace the awful standard seats in the Chimaera with Tuscan seats that immediately modernised the interior and these were reupholstered in black and carbon fibre leather (with blood red stitching). The dash top and A pillars were covered in black Alcantara (again with red stitching) and the centre console armrests were recreated in the same Alcantara. Alongside this I also added some covers and gaiters to the control switches and gearstick to change them to a silver colour (to lift them from the black). Finally I had the carpets replaced and the dash panel made into a patterned steel version.
Once this was all underway I was given a great piece of advice by the body shop… they realised that the stock TVR burgundy hood was an almost like for like match for the blood red colour detailing I had on the car. When first they suggested making the hood red I immediately had my doubts, but when I saw the material in the flesh it was as though it had meant to be! The colour was so close it was uncanny, so I decided to try and emulate the Jaguar F-Type style of having a white body and red hood.
Other changes I made whilst the car was in included having the plenum and rocker covers sprayed the same red as well as a number of other items under the bonnet changed to lift the engine. I also decided to change the back section of the exhausts as I felt these too dated the car, so have had rear cans fitted that fit the contour of the rear valence much more snugly.
One day I may well come back to supercharge Echidna but for now I am really pleased with how the design came together and has turned into a car that to my mind encapsulates everything I was attempting to achieve. The most positive thing is that I would not change anything on the design!
Finally…Whilst all of this work was on-going I also discussed with my Fiancée the wedding car that we would use when we marry this year and we decided to use Echidna, so now she is complete she has been left in the garage until early May when she gets her first proper run out (I really hope she starts!!!).
Here is the article text (as was sent to me) and I will put some pictures up too
Transformation of Echidna
A little background…
I have for years wanted a TVR for the simple reason that when I was a child, my friend’s dad owned a Griffith 500 that looked great and sounded brilliant. If that wasn’t enough, he used to race superbikes so knew a thing or two about fast vehicles. He only kept the car a short while, stating that it was “uncontrollable”, which immediately as a young boy meant I wanted one!
A few years have passed since then and I invested in a Chimaera 400 as a new project a couple of years ago.
With all of the cars I have owned I have named them and given that I wanted to enhance the car I decided to call her ‘Echidna’. Why Echidna? Well, in Greek mythology Chimaera is the daughter of Echidna and Echidna was known as the ‘Mother of all Monsters’. Given the childhood memories and my plans for her I thought it an apt name!
Plans for the transformation…
When buying Echidna I decided that I would try to modernise the look of the car without going down the ‘body kit’ style route and without losing her original features.
I had a think about what has become more commonplace on modern vehicles and also how I could make her look slightly more race oriented (as I have always been fascinated by the Le Mans LMGTE style cars).
The first area of research was standard modernisation of the car. I decided to have the front lights replaced to model the Tuscan style and replace the wing mirrors (which I always thought looked out of place on the car). Whilst researching this I did find that people either seem to do something completely amazing to change a TVR or try to restore to original. This worried me somewhat as I was going to attempt to go in between; not crazy but equally not original.
Having decided on the changes above I then thought about the shape of the car and how it could be made to look newer. The obvious design details that date the car are the wheels, side repeaters, door locks and the (apologies in advance!) badges.
Therefore I decided to try to change all of these areas. I did not want to lose the original Imola alloys as it would have been too easy to replace them with something after-market so decided upon having them re-sprayed. At about this time I also began to notice that many modern cars (esp. 4x4s and sports cars) have fins or vents along the wings. This seemed like an ideal way to do something different to Echidna without changing too much. I spent (literally) ages, thinking about and looking at the profile of existing vents (including those from Maserati and Range Rover) before realising that the BMW Z3 wing shape was similar to that of the TVR. I bought a used pair and created a template to offer up the side of the car. It looked like a good fit. So my plan was hatched. I would have the wings modified to hold the Z3 vents and whilst I am at it I would also include the BMW side repeaters from an M3 as they have the same shape as the vents. Better still I sourced some TVR badges to replace the (difficult to remove) BMW ones!
Finally I decided that the TVR and Chimaera badges made the car look too narrow and cluttered up the boot, so these were removed in preparation for a paint job, which immediately made the car seem wider and squatter.
I come back to the earlier LMGTE reference now… I also decided that the car needed a wing. Not because of aerodynamics but because I saw an advert featuring an Aston Martin Le Mans car in it. My mind was made up so I bought a carbon fibre wing and decided to fit it. In fairness I guess it is not everyone’s ‘cup of tea’ but I think that it has really added something to Echidna.
At this point the whole colour scheme came to mind. I used to have a Westfield that I changed to have a cream body with black wheels. I was always told that it looked good and as such I decided to go down a similar route this time with Echidna. I set about finding a dark grey, white and blood red colour combination as the design came to life in my head.
The car went away for paint and the body work to be completed and once done looked amazing. The only downside was that the interior (originally cream and biscuit) looked awful and the roof looked tatty. It was at this point my original plans changed. I was going to supercharge Echidna (Mother of all Monsters and all that). But couldn’t see how it could be seen with such a terrible interior. I decided therefore to spend the supercharger money on having the interior reupholstered and the roof replaced.
So stage two of the transformation kicked off. I spent a lot of time deliberating over the interior and decided that black on black would be best but with some tweaks to modernise. Whilst thinking of the interior an image of the interior from a Ferrari F40 kept coming into my mind (the black Alcantara and red stitching) so I decided that I wanted to do something like that. I finally decided to replace the awful standard seats in the Chimaera with Tuscan seats that immediately modernised the interior and these were reupholstered in black and carbon fibre leather (with blood red stitching). The dash top and A pillars were covered in black Alcantara (again with red stitching) and the centre console armrests were recreated in the same Alcantara. Alongside this I also added some covers and gaiters to the control switches and gearstick to change them to a silver colour (to lift them from the black). Finally I had the carpets replaced and the dash panel made into a patterned steel version.
Once this was all underway I was given a great piece of advice by the body shop… they realised that the stock TVR burgundy hood was an almost like for like match for the blood red colour detailing I had on the car. When first they suggested making the hood red I immediately had my doubts, but when I saw the material in the flesh it was as though it had meant to be! The colour was so close it was uncanny, so I decided to try and emulate the Jaguar F-Type style of having a white body and red hood.
Other changes I made whilst the car was in included having the plenum and rocker covers sprayed the same red as well as a number of other items under the bonnet changed to lift the engine. I also decided to change the back section of the exhausts as I felt these too dated the car, so have had rear cans fitted that fit the contour of the rear valence much more snugly.
One day I may well come back to supercharge Echidna but for now I am really pleased with how the design came together and has turned into a car that to my mind encapsulates everything I was attempting to achieve. The most positive thing is that I would not change anything on the design!
Finally…Whilst all of this work was on-going I also discussed with my Fiancée the wedding car that we would use when we marry this year and we decided to use Echidna, so now she is complete she has been left in the garage until early May when she gets her first proper run out (I really hope she starts!!!).
Credit where it's due Neil, you put in a lot of dedication to get the car where you wanted and that has to be admired. It was really interesting to read through your piece and actually made it a lot easier to understand, if not agree with*, your decisions regarding the car.
I think the reason for the vitriol is purely based on the choice of car rather than how tastefully the mods were applied- do something similar to a commonly available car and nobody would bat an eyelid, but sadly these cars aren't common. It is definitely an interesting project and I hope you get many years of joy from it, good luck for your future endeavours with Ed China. Oops!!
Mike
(*as you said yourself everyone is entitled to their opinion and if we all had the same one the car world would be a jolly boring place, personally I think a standard Chim is a thing of beauty and its sacrilege to throw visual mods at one- but presumably you think otherwise and there's no problem with that)
I think the reason for the vitriol is purely based on the choice of car rather than how tastefully the mods were applied- do something similar to a commonly available car and nobody would bat an eyelid, but sadly these cars aren't common. It is definitely an interesting project and I hope you get many years of joy from it, good luck for your future endeavours with Ed China. Oops!!
Mike
(*as you said yourself everyone is entitled to their opinion and if we all had the same one the car world would be a jolly boring place, personally I think a standard Chim is a thing of beauty and its sacrilege to throw visual mods at one- but presumably you think otherwise and there's no problem with that)
Thanks for the comments - agree entirely the chimaera was an odd choice for this project, but I felt that most normal cars had been done to death so went for this :-)
It is also interesting that when the car is seen by the general public in the flesh it always receives lots of positive attention (far more than I expected!) and for that I am grateful. I have actually often used it as a wedding car for people who have requested it as it seems to have hit an odd sweet spot there!
The interesting side point though is that I have done all sorts of car projects over the years but this one has undoubtedly given the most negative feedback from keyboard warriors and has made me realise that one should only do things for one's own enjoyment as no matter what one does, it is unlikely to please everyone :-)
It is also interesting that when the car is seen by the general public in the flesh it always receives lots of positive attention (far more than I expected!) and for that I am grateful. I have actually often used it as a wedding car for people who have requested it as it seems to have hit an odd sweet spot there!
The interesting side point though is that I have done all sorts of car projects over the years but this one has undoubtedly given the most negative feedback from keyboard warriors and has made me realise that one should only do things for one's own enjoyment as no matter what one does, it is unlikely to please everyone :-)
That age old saying comes to mind
"You can please some of the people some of the time, but not all the people all of the time"
Without having read the thread so don't know what engine mods you've employed but being an old Gran Torismo (online warrior)
I like the rear wing 
Each to there own and as long as the car ain't smashed up it's better than it rotting somewhere whatever an owner chooses to do with his car ( project)
Now pack it in and put it back to normal,,,,
"You can please some of the people some of the time, but not all the people all of the time"
Without having read the thread so don't know what engine mods you've employed but being an old Gran Torismo (online warrior)
I like the rear wing Each to there own and as long as the car ain't smashed up it's better than it rotting somewhere whatever an owner chooses to do with his car ( project)
Now pack it in and put it back to normal,,,,
Welcome to the forum Neil, not sure what you make of all the feedback but you certainly made a dramatic entrance and comment as follows.
Don't think you have done anything more than the majority of TVR owners on here in making your Chimaera your own IMHO believe the side vents are not something I would expect to see on a TVR, but maybe this is what makes the roof line look different !!
I think your comment about Echidna getting a lot of attention is very much about all TVR's, in my experience have found that you do not need to add anything to these great cars to be noticed – they just seem to have a positive connection with most people from all walks of life.
Its interesting that some have commented that we do not see this type of modding on other TVR models and ponder if this is because of value – the Chimaera has always been seen as the runt of the family but suspect this will change as values and rarity continue to rise.
Thank you for posting your pic's – am about to embark on an interior for my Chimaera this year following the external restoration last year, was not as brave as you and kept to headlight and mirror mods only . I have seen a couple of ideas you have completed that I may incorporate into my own project.
Good luck with your wedding plans, am sure if Echidna needed company for the Rumble to the Church you need only post on here – any excuse for a TVR meet !
Andy
Don't think you have done anything more than the majority of TVR owners on here in making your Chimaera your own IMHO believe the side vents are not something I would expect to see on a TVR, but maybe this is what makes the roof line look different !!
I think your comment about Echidna getting a lot of attention is very much about all TVR's, in my experience have found that you do not need to add anything to these great cars to be noticed – they just seem to have a positive connection with most people from all walks of life.
Its interesting that some have commented that we do not see this type of modding on other TVR models and ponder if this is because of value – the Chimaera has always been seen as the runt of the family but suspect this will change as values and rarity continue to rise.
Thank you for posting your pic's – am about to embark on an interior for my Chimaera this year following the external restoration last year, was not as brave as you and kept to headlight and mirror mods only . I have seen a couple of ideas you have completed that I may incorporate into my own project.
Good luck with your wedding plans, am sure if Echidna needed company for the Rumble to the Church you need only post on here – any excuse for a TVR meet !
Andy
Hi Andy and thanks for the comments. I genuinely take no negatives from people's feedback mainly because if I were not to listen to others views I would not learn anything but also because I did what i imagined in my head and from my own renders to the finished article I am pleased with the fidelity.
Thanks for the offer re the wedding but unless I am unlucky and find myself in the market again, I have now been married three years.
By some odd coincidence, one of my mates saw this on PH a few days ago and I felt I should join really to give my side of the discussion.
No offence taken by any of the comments though and happy to have given people something to talk about.
If you have ideas from my interior I am happy to share some better pictures as those were what I had to hand but I ended up removing the ashtrays and doing some other modernising tweaks. I had further plans including running an ally finishing strip to divide the top and bottom dash panels but I never got round to making it from the mould I created! Should have pictures of my plans though if that's useful.
Cheers
Neil
Thanks for the offer re the wedding but unless I am unlucky and find myself in the market again, I have now been married three years.
By some odd coincidence, one of my mates saw this on PH a few days ago and I felt I should join really to give my side of the discussion.
No offence taken by any of the comments though and happy to have given people something to talk about.
If you have ideas from my interior I am happy to share some better pictures as those were what I had to hand but I ended up removing the ashtrays and doing some other modernising tweaks. I had further plans including running an ally finishing strip to divide the top and bottom dash panels but I never got round to making it from the mould I created! Should have pictures of my plans though if that's useful.
Cheers
Neil
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