Vintage Thing No.21 - Toniq R

Here's another Vintage Thing that's happening today - and again in Cornwall. And that's not the designer but his mum and dad.


As well as being a family affair, the Toniq R is a road legal track day car built at Trebudannon near Newquay. I’d heard of it from Peter Tuthill’s book Cornwall’s Motor Industry but never seen one until I encountered this one on show at Royal Cornwall.

It’s a 21st century interpretation of the classic Lotus Seven. It’s a road legal track day car and comes in two forms. This particular example has a Honda Fireblade engine but there's another demonstrator with a Ford Duratec engine. I understand that the on paper performance is about the same but the driving experience is totally different.

On this Fireblade powered example, the engine has been completely rebuilt. The red and green buttons on the steering wheel take care of gearshifts. Red goes down for first and then you frantically press green to keep changing up for the other gears on the motorcycle pattern gearbox. There is no reverse gear on this example but one can easily be incorporated since Toniq build each car to the individual customer’s requirements. It just depends on what you want to use it for.

The Toniq R was designed by Colin Williams when he was a graduate of Huddersfield University’s Transport design course. (That isn't him by the way. That was another enthusiastic prospective purchaser.) Using the University's engineering expertise a full size prototype was produced and the interest this caused established Huddersfield's reputation for transport design.



I was very interested to learn about this from Colin's dad. Apparently they went up to look around Coventry before Colin chose Huddersfield. "Coventry was very closed in but when you're in the middle of Huddersfield you can still see the moors."

In addition to my course at Coventry there is now this one at Huddersfield and another at Newcastle. Considering how little we make of anything in this country nowadays - especially with engines and wheels - I find this very encouraging.

The Toniq R divides opinion on its looks but I like it. I particularly like the way the headlamps have been treated. It looks like a grounded fighter aircraft for those black cylinders look like weapons. But they wouldn't be machine guns or cannons. They'd be lasers.



From side on the Toniq R looks very sleek especially when compared to the wedges you get these days. Not many designers get to realise their creations. This is a glorious exception to that rule and it seems that specialising is the best way to go. There's no committee to please and no focus groups apart from motorheads.

So many people have Locaterfields these days. My mate Al even goes so far as to call them dog turds. He drives a Morgan.

there have even some Morgan replicas but their appeal is limited. Why buy an imitation when you can have the real thing? And when it comes to Locosts, Caterhams and Westfields, why have soemthing that looks like all the other Locaterfields?

The old Lotus 7 look is a look that has become a brand. Some people won't be satisfied with anything that doesn't look like a Lotus 7. They have a pre-conceived idea about what their car should look like and what their mates think their car looks like when they're bragging about it in the pub.

But I can't help feeling that the Locaterfields aren't so special any more. For Morgan owning Al this has already happened. I still like Seven's and their kith and kin but they're almost mainstream.

So here is the Toniq R - poised to refresh the aesthetic and driving senses that have become a little jaded.

It's very difficult to re-design an icon. Brave even. Once seen the Toniq R is unlikely to be forgotten. So that's a Vintage Thing then.