Is a 4 litre Chimaera slow?...No!

2009-07-08 13:00:00

There has been a lot of discussion recently on the PistonHeads forum whether the 4 litre Chimaera is too slow. I find this amusing. The 400 is slower compared to other TVRs, but it is in no way a slow car.

My 15 year old 400 with no engine mods puts out 183 bhp @ wheels, approx 220bhp @ fly. Torque is 230 lbs ft and is very flat. Power peaks at 5500 rpm, but even up to 6200 rpm, the power barely drops off at all (I've seen other dyno graphs where power disappears significantly past 5500 rpm).

With these figures, i believe my car is one of the quicker 400s. I've managed 5.3s to 60mph and a quarter mile in just over 14s. With a better driver, i reckon Autocar's test figures of 5.2s and 13.8s are achievable.

Some of my highlights include:

Just out accelerating a E46 M3

Matching a 996 C4 in acceleration, until we got to a corner - i had to back off, he didn't!!

Easily beating Evo's/Impreza's in traffic light GPs (their turbo lag probably doesn't help)

On a CarLimits day with one other driver in a Mk1 Elise 118, out-accelerating (not hard against the 118), out-braking in the wet (surprising), and out-cornering (very surprising) the Elise

On the same CarLimits day, my car was 12s quicker on a time circuit which only took 1min 6sec to complete. Passengering in each others cars, it was clear mine was much more difficult to drive/control however.

My car feels very quick in every gear apart from 5th, but i only ever use that for motorway cruising. The Chimaera is a car with plenty of grip, but is it a very hard car to drive at the limit. Anyone can seemingly drive a modern hot hatch fast, but you need to be a very skilled driver to do the same in a Chimaera. I'm not one of them unfortunately!

There are quicker cars, there are cars that corner faster, but for me my 400 has everything i need in a road car.