Tuscan wriiten off big time. Worst one I have seen

[Mr Freefall]

I saw a Tuscan so badly smashed at the weekend that it would make you think twice about owning one!

It was (post context) the demonstrator for the TVR Centre Barnet, and a guy had hired it for the day by all accounts.

Side swiped a lamppost and it hit passenger side just where the door hinge is connected to the body. It just ripped thought here and if a passenger had been present they would have no legs left. Honestly, I recon the passenger may have even been killed or would have to have their legs cut off.

Luckily, there was no passenger and as I hear the guy driving was ok. There looked to be no protection in this area of the car at all and the gearbox tunnel was the stopping point for the lamppost going through to the driver

I have to be honest, if it looks like I’m not going to make a corner and I can go straight on into a hedge or field I will take this option, I not a fan of sideswiping anything in the Tuscan after seeing this…

A heads up to what can go wrong in these beasts, and luckily it seems as if no one was badly hurt on this occasion apart from this guy’s pride and wallet. There was a £5000 excess on the car of which he has to pay £2500 of…


>>> Edited by Mr Freefall on Monday 4th August 16:29

[Don]

What a nutter though. I mean...surely if you hire a Tuscan you must have some idea of how they can bite back - or you'd think the dealer would have made some comment.


Yet another reason for the insurers to whack up our premium next year.

Oh...I thought Tuscans did have side-impact protection..??.I'm pretty certain our Chimaera doesn't

[smb]

unfortunately unless you have a tank , hitting a lampost side on at much more than 30 is going to do major damage. The side impact tests for new cars is at 30mph I suspect the tuscan could easily have been doing more than 30. cars are stronger today, but not that strong.

[ehasler]

Photo of inside of a Tuscan door

[pbrettle]

There have been posts similar to this on all of the TVR forums. There seems to be an impression that TVR's arent safe or have "design faults". This isnt the case and they are intrinsically safe by design. I'll ramble on for a while to explain a couple of things.

GRP is an excellent material to build a car body from. Other than the side effect of heat transfer (like it doesnt in comparison to metal), it has excellent crash and impact features. GRP will transfer the energy of an impact throughout the body and bend and flex accordingly - but not necessarilly break. If the impact is big enough it will break and crush, but with MUCH better characteristics than metal. So GRP is pretty good.

All TVR's have had separate chassis made of welded together sections. This will always be a trade-off between safety and weight, but in general the use of a separate chassis is an excellent way to provide strength in the car. A monocoque (SP?) body has the strength in the body itself - which being metal doesnt disperse the energy that well, this leads to a high ability to crush and deform (which isnt necessarily a bad thing). The crush and deform aspect is usually designed in, but by doing this you are fundamentally weakening the monocoque frame and rendering it less efficient. The use of a separate chassis gets around these problems by having stong base which wont deform unless you REALLY prang it... So separate chassis are pretty good then....

So, are TVR's unsafe? No not at all. Side swipe anything against a lampost and you will do SERIOUS damage. Just cos its a TVR doesnt mean that its more susceptible than any other car. On thing though that is worth bearing in mind - a Tuscan does have a roll-over bar which provides greater head protection than say a Chimaera or Griffith. If you do flip a Tuscan you should be fine, while another model might be a little more serious.

What we have never mentioned is passive safety and impact injuries. The cockpit of a TVR is a pretty cosy place at the best of times and a major shunt will push some of that nice turned aluminium into your legs and body.... Ok dont want padding all over the place and airbags left, right and centre. But some additional passive safety is probably a good thing and worth having to reduce injuries.... just my 10p worth though.

[S1X OK]

For what it's worth, if I was to consider how any car I drive is going to react at being hit on the midriff with a lamp post, I'd be too scared to go out in anything but a Volvo. Whilst I appreciate some drivers like to feel that womb-like security some cars provide, I drive my Tuscan because of the enjoyment I get from it and not because it will protect me totally if I fail to respect it's power.
I could jump to the conclusion that the guy that sided the Tuscan will not have spent too long getting to know it before being given an abrupt lesson in how to respect horsepower. If I'm wrong and he's a veteran PHer, I apologise, but then, if you are, you should know better.

[AndyS2]

I once saw an XJ40 Jag that had gone into a tree on the passenger side, the tree was no more than 6in in diametre ( not huge by any standard ) and the jag had hit it right in the middle of the passenger door, not sure how fast it was going but the damage was MASSIVE. The car had litterally folded around the tree right up to the transmission tunnel. I always thought Jags were big strong cars and I was amazed at how much damage could be done by such a small tree. The tree incidentally survived without so much as a scratch and is still living today!!
If your going fast enough then nothing is going to save you, least of all a car with glass fibre body work and a couple of 1" tubes welded into the door in the form of side impact protection!!

[Alf Essex]

In my view unless you can prove you have experience of driving a TVR in the past I don't think they should be offered for hire...in my view non-TVR drivers don't know the power these things produce and its likely to kill them! Its ok if your new and buying as you have time to learn to driver properly and its your hard earned cash! anyone who just wants to hire for a day/weekend it likely to want to use the power...therefore a danger to themselves and others! All IMO of course....

This is not the first hired Tuscan thats been trashed and is unlikely to be the last I'm afraid!

Alan.

[Podie]

The problem with lampposts is that they tend not to move to much... trees are even worse.

As someone who has worked in occupant safety, and crash labs this doesn't sound any worse than any other vehicle on the road. In fact, you'd be surprised what's out there... at the end of the day, you hit anything, at any speed - it's going to hurt.

[jaydee]

Pole impact is an extremely difficult area to design for. EuroNCAP carry out pole impact tests and the majority of vehicles still do not have good results. TBH the side impact protection on the Tuscan (based on the outcome of real incidents) is fairly poor, even allowing for the inherent difficulties in providing good SIP in backbone chassised vehicles.
I'd find the contention that TVRs are "intrinsically safe by design" extremely dubious, but that would apply to the vast majority of limited production vehicles.

[salty-nlv]

Was this the knighfire red demo car? as i didn't see it up there last night?

[Mr Freefall]

salty-nlv said:

Was this the knighfire red demo car? as i didn't see it up there last night?

Nope was the black 03 reg.

Read all these post, and my post wasn't about the safety of the Tuscan I love mine and it hasn't put me of driving it, it was just a wake-up call to what can go wrong very quickly. My dad used to say to me when I started to drive 'look out for lampposts', to which I questioned 'why?'. He then went on to say, "look at most places you would run out of road, on bends etc, and you will see a lampposts there ready to greet you". I did look and true enough there was a lamppost…

Pity no one had a picture from the passenger side, it did look horrific.

But, thankfully no one was seriously hurt


>> Edited by Mr Freefall on Tuesday 5th August 15:48

[zebede]

nope it was the dark blue 4 litre tuscan apparently the guy said it was a little shunt not seen it so can't comment really

[tvr totty]

ours is engineless at the moment so when picking up the courtesty car from the dealer, managed to have a good look around our car as it was on the hydraulic ramp.

must admit, well impressed with the extra protection underneath, chassis etc, but as the guy said from castle tvr when he took me for my first ever tuscan experience!! (driving i hasten to add) - if you want this car to bite you on your ass - it will, it does everything you tell it, wether its right or wrong its down to you!! - how true he was. I am sure that with a car like this, it can still continue to surpise you

respect.....

[tvrdrool]

Having hit a tree many years ago in an Opel Manta and written off the car, I would suggest that it's best to not hit things!

There are no such things as accidents, simply poor driving, badly maintained vehicles, and little or no forethought.

I hope this helps.

[Jon Gwynne]

pbrettle said:

So, are TVR's unsafe? No not at all. Side swipe anything against a lampost and you will do SERIOUS damage. Just cos its a TVR doesnt mean that its more susceptible than any other car. On thing though that is worth bearing in mind - a Tuscan does have a roll-over bar which provides greater head protection than say a Chimaera or Griffith. If you do flip a Tuscan you should be fine, while another model might be a little more serious.

Side impacts are tricky things. I've seen ostensibly safe cars after relatively low-speed side impacts look like they had been run over by a tank. On the other hand, I've seen cars that have withstood side impacts with larger vehicles and high speeds with minimal damage to the passenger compartment.

At the end of the day, it is a crap-shoot. It is all down to the nature of the collision, the object you hit, the distribution of the impact force and a million other variables that have little to do with the actual design of the car.

One thing that I think it fair to generalize about is that the lighter the car you're in is, the less of your own intertia can be used against you. Naturally, cars like the TVR Tuscan (or just about anything else, have TVR ever made a heavy car?), Lotus Elise, Noble M12, etc. would score well in this regard and ridiculous monstrosities like SUVs and Volvo/Mercedes "safety" behemoths would not.

In fact, in a collision with something like a lamppost (something which concentrates the impact force over a very small area) even a relativey minor difference in weight can make a big difference.

Of course, weight isn't the only measure of safety butit should be considered one of the key factors, IMHO.

p.s. Aren't TVR's (Tuscans included) designed as race cars? Aren't they designed to protect the occupant(s) in even high-speed accidents? Isn't that the whole point of the "safety cage" design?

Just curious...

[ChristineC]

That blue one was a relatively new one as well. It was in the showroom when I last went down and had only just arrived.

Very nasty accient. What concerns me is the roll bar for tall people (luckily I dont fall into this category). It seems taht if you have to have your seat far back, the first thing your head will hit in a front on accident is the roll bar and not the seat head rest. Has anyone else noticed this?

C

[d_drinks]

Jon Gwynne said:

p.s. Aren't TVR's (Tuscans included) designed as race cars? Aren't they designed to protect the occupant(s) in even high-speed accidents? Isn't that the whole point of the "safety cage" design? Just curious...

There have been race specific models, Tuscan Challenge (not to be confused in any way with the road version) Speed 12, Cerbera Speed 6 GT etc. But generaly TVR's are designed as road cars. The Griff and Chimaera do not even have side impact protection - unlike a race car.

The T400R or Tuscan R as it was known until last year that the likes of CDL run in British GT's are heavily modified in terms of structural strengh though look like their road going counterparts.

[PiB]

Doesn't the UK require some kind of crash testing from which a score is derived that can then be compared by consumers. Are there any independent testers?

I still buy one if I could.