Driving a TVR for the first time is a rite of passage at PH. I was lucky to tick that off relatively quickly by taking a Sagaris for a spin early last year, and boy did it live up to the hype. The bark from the 4.0-litre Speed Six, the progressiveness of the power delivery, the perfectly weighted steering. Sure, the cabin made virtually no sense and I’m sure my experience may have been wildly different had the conditions been damp, but the Sagaris felt nowhere near as intimidating as TVR’s widow-maker reputation would have you believe.
In truth, the Sagaris was a vastly different beast from the cars that preceded it. When the company was taken over in 2004 by a then-24-year-old Russian bussinessman, Nikolay Smolensky, he demanded that TVR up its game on practically all fronts. Engineered by chassis guru Daniel Boardman, the Sagaris represented a giant step up in its chassis and rolling refinement - so much so that TVR decided to take the learnings from its wild new wonder and apply them to the beautiful yet flawed Tuscan.
The resulting ‘Tuscan 2’ would be the final model to come out of Blackpool before the firm closed up shop in 2007 and, on the surface, it looked like a simple facelift. The crazy headlights ‘drilled’ into the bodywork were replaced with more conventional covered lamps, while a splitter up front and a tiny boot spoiler gave the impression it’d been put through a wind tunnel (which, let’s be honest, was probably the tea boy blowing smoke through a desk fan). The engine was left mostly unchanged, too, with its 4.0-litre straight-six developing 406hp in S guise and a deliciously throaty exhaust note with it.
Underneath, however, was a different story. The spring and damper rates were retuned, the suspension geometry revised and a slower steering rack selected to help round off the old Tuscan’s many edges. And while it still had its fair share of, er, TVRisms (thirst for premium unleaded, baffling ergonomics and questionable reliability), it was a marked improvement over its predecessor dynamically speaking. Obviously the Sagaris and Tuscan 2 weren’t enough to save the company, but there’s no denying TVR went out with a bang - and the good kind at that.
Before production officially wound up, the company came out with this: the Tuscan ‘3’ Convertible. There’s little information on the run-out Tuscans, but it’s believed the colloquially-named ‘Mk3’ was only ever available as a Convertible and was almost identical to that of the Tuscan 2. It did, however, feature an ever madder ‘wavy’ dashboard, new oval-shaped exhaust outlets and larger five-spoke wheels inspired by the Sagaris 2 unicorn. In Wedgewood Blue over Portland Grey hide, it looks just as jaw-dropping now as it would have done back in 2006.
That’s right: this is one of the very last examples to roll off the production line. The seller claims that only 16 examples of the Tuscan S Convertible were ever produced, with this particular car arriving in November 2006 - a month before the company entered administration. Thankfully, it has has been well looked after since then, with only 18,000 miles clocked and an extensive specialist service history. You’ll need £56,000 to get your name on the V5, which is a fair whack more than this 2005 Tuscan Convertible. That one’s not an S, mind, nor does it come with the ultra-rare wheels and uprated exhaust. Is it worth the £15k premium? Discuss…
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