TVR Speed Eight engine

The TVR Speed Eight was the name of a normally aspirated V8 car engine designed and manufactured by TVR. The engine was intended to power the TVR Griffith and the TVR Chimaera but delays in its production meant that it powered only the TVR Cerbera and the TVR Tuscan Racer. The reason behind the engine's development and production was that in that particular time Rover was bought by BMW and Peter Wheeler the boss of TVR in that time, feared that BMW would drop the Rover V8 engine used in TVRs since the early 80's, so he contracted car engine designer Al Melling to design a brand new V8 engine to power the TVR Cerbera as well as an engine that TVR could sell to other car manufacurers.

The engine itself was designed by engine guru Al Melling along with John Ravenscroft and the then boss of TVR Peter Wheeler. It's production codename was AJP8 much like the Speed Six engine's AJP6 codename. The Speed Eight featured many aspects found in a racing engine, such as a flat plane crankshaft a 75 degree Vee angle, a SOHC arrangement operating two valves per cylinder and a sequential fuel injection.

There were two versions of the Speed Eight engine. A 4.2 litres and a 4.5 litres version. The first version produced 360 bhp and the latter one produced 420 bhp. On top of that there was a Red Rose version with altered ECU mapping that produced up to 440 bhp. We must also note that the Speed Eight engine has one of the highest specific outputs for a normally aspirated engine with 83.3bhp/litre for the 4.2 litres, 93.3/litre for the 4.5 litre and 97.7 for the Red Rose spec 4.5 litre engine. Another notable aspect is the size of the engine. Suprisingly enough for a V8, the total weight according to TVR is 121 kilograms.

Even though the engine was a strong seller in the Speed Eight Cerbera, TVR dropped it when they dropped the Cerbera off production in 2003. Although a special anniversary Cerbera made in 2006 to celebrate this great sports car used the 4.5 litres version of the engine no other TVR or in fact any other car has used it since then.In recent news though, Al Melling is planning to produce a new sports car called the Melling Griffon which will be powered by an improved 4.7 litre 460 bhp version of the AJP8.