The TVR Chimaera is the entry point to the TVR model range. It has been designed to be every bit as much of a Grand Tourer as a sports car with the emphasis being evenly split between ride and handling, torque and horsepower, practicality and light weight. At the same time as BBC Top Gear magazine was enthusing that the "TVR completely blitzes the opposition, in any gear, from any speed to any speed", Autocar was attesting that "the Chimaera is great fun to drive even when you're just tootling along." Ten years of development have resulted in the perfect evolution of the breed. The Chimaera has evolved into the ideal embodiment of the modern British sports car. The car is a piece of aerodynamic sculpture, not designed on a computer, which is immediately obvious on first sight. Great emphasis has been placed on purity of line with no external fuel filler cap, boot release or even door handles as the doors open on the press of buttons under the door mirrors. In 2001, the car was lightly facelifted and now features a new nose with faired-in headlights and a mildly restyled tail. It was of the Chimaera that Jeremy Clarkson wrote "Its spacious cockpit is a dream too, with wood, leather and polished aluminium styled by someone who truly understands interior design." The new Cerbera-style seats of the Chimaera are leather as standard and feature a removable squab for when you want extra lateral support on the racetrack. The Chimaera also now boasts all aluminium switchgear as well as comprehensive instrumentation of you can specify the colour. This is part of an almost bewildering array of choices that customers make when ordering a car which include ten thousand colours for the paintwork, more than forty for the leather, fourteen for the carpet, five for the hood, twenty for the stitching and even five different materials for the dashboard from burr walnut to engine-turned aluminium.
Source: The official TVR Web Site (2003)