Peter Wheeler, the enigmatic CEO who built TVR from a British also-ran into a company with strikingly-designed world-beating supercars, was truly like nobody else. An actual engineer with actual talent, Wheeler worked diligently to develop some of the most interesting cars ever made road legal. This designation certainly includes his last project, the amphibious Scamander. Wheeler wanted a performance car that could do it all, including carrying him (and some of his stuff) across the soggy moors of his farm.
“I created it for me, to be honest,” Wheeler told EVO’s Harry Metcalfe in 2008. “I enjoy shooting, sailing and driving on track, so I wanted something that could cover all these elements. I call it an RRV, for rapid response vehicle.”
If you gave me a pile of psychedelics and a design brief to draw a moon rover from 2098, I still couldn’t come up with something as wild as the Scamander. This is everything the Cybertruck should have been. There’s nothing else like it on the road. Everyone who sees one of these driving around instantly wants to know more about the driver, while everyone who sees a Cybertruck wants to distance themselves from the driver as quickly as possible. It’s weird and quirky, but not in a shitty dystopian way.
The Scamander prototype has been dormant for about as long as TVR has been threatening to mount a revival. Thanks in part to Harry Metcalfe, the bizarre one-off is finally road legal again and will be entered in next month’s London Concours. It’s awesome to see Wheeler’s vision back on the road, and delivering smiles wherever it goes. If I saw this thing on the street, I’d probably shout with excitement.