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- The Tri-State Area
One of the most famous cars from the original Gran Turismo was the TVR Cerbera LM, a fictional racing car in the game's "LM Edition" fleet that the first message boards and GameFAQs contributors would argue over whether it meant "Limited" or "Le Mans" until everyone was blue in the face.
While the car itself was fictional, its looks and livery appear to be based on an obscure, real racing car campaigned in the British GT Championship from 1995 as an official works entry from TVR under the TVR Engineering team banner.
The BGT featured some pretty blurry class lines at the time, with the Cerbera (officially a Cerbera Speed Eight) entered in the GT2 category, where it faced a variety of Porsches, the odd Esprit, and the Marcos Mantara - with GT1 made up of the F40s, XJ220s, and McLaren F1s of the world.
Relatively small grids meant that a lot could happen in the events, as well as regular top five finishes for the Cerbera - out of seven entries, most often - under Mark Hales. It would go on to achieve a victory in the 1996 season at Snetterton, with Hales and Phil Andrews, after the Porsche 993 GT1 which crossed the line first was disqualified.
TVR Engineering also campaigned the car in BPR Global GT endurance races, at Silverstone and Brands Hatch, though results were hardly the same as the all-conquering Cerbera LM as it placed last of the running cars (as a GT3) in 1995 and didn't finish in 1996.
Performance figures of the real thing are unlikely to match that of the fictional car, with the Cerbera LM packing over 600hp on a sub-900kg car - quite some way out of the Speed Eight's power and weight, as that would have put it in as a GT1 car.
Although TVR's present-day troubles are well documented, TVR was foundational for Gran Turismo and would make a nice, nostalgic return for the brand.
