The one featured in Flyer magazine was my Tiara. I owned it for about 4 years, but unfortunately had an engine failure over the Isle of Wight which forced me to sell as the engine repair was going to be far too expensive. It was a pity they never caught on as it was a great aeroplane. I now fly an arrow which doesn’t have the performance or the range. I miss my Tiara days.
Regards
Mooney Driver,
I believe if you re-read my previous post, I acknowledged that I had made an incorrect assumption and I even said sorry. 
Cheers.
Bloomer,
for all I can see this is NOT a Tiara, but a President with the 250 hp IO540CB5 engine. Check page 2 of the linked document.
The review by Flyer linked IS a Tiara. So not the correct airplane reviewed.
The aircraft in planecheck is the President, which is more common than the Tiara. Price looks optimistic.
The Tiara engine would be called a GIO420 if it had a normal name. It has 285hp at 4000rpm geared to 2000rpm prop. A very smooth running engine. It has a VTC on the crankshaft and drives the prop through a quill shaft which also drives the camshaft. Therefore it doesn’t have a gearbox as such. It was the first new design in decades and had a number of unusual features e.g. separate cylinder heads. Unfortunately it arrived just a few years before the collapse of the aircraft market in the early 80s. There was also a 320hp version of the same engine with higher compression pistons. It was lighter, smaller and more powerful than the then current 540s and 520s.
I believe there are still a few Tiara engines flying in the the Piper Pawnee Brave ag-aircraft.
Adverts of planes for sale, without the owner knowing, is fairly common. I think the scam usually involves getting a deposit from the prospective buyer in return for a flight, but the flight never takes place because the “seller” does a runner with the deposit.
I recall one case where the deposit was about £10k! It was a TB20GT and there was a lot of interest, with a number of people emailing me (the price one pays for getting an article at or near the top of google hits) asking what I thought of it
A short search reveals this, which is on Planecheck, which is not one of the sites I refer to above.
It’s F reg and has an IO540
http://www.planecheck.com/index.asp?ent=da&id=15395&cor=y
It might have been your aircraft Ted.P !!
I have noticed several advertisements on certain web sites which seem to have been put up without the knowledge of the owners. It’s presumably to pad out the listings, hoping to stop people realising that the site is in fact hopeless and only has 2 genuine adverts on there.
I am curious as to where this Tiara was advertised. AFAIK there are only 2 airworthy Tiaras left in Europe, I own one and the other is on the D Reg but based in the UK. There may be another one in France.
The Tiara engi e is indeed next toa no go. I understand however that it is possible to swap the Tiara for a 250 hp Lycoming IO540. Airframe is identical with the HR100/250TR.
There are several versions of the HR100, the more popular are the Royal and Safari with fixed gear and 200/210hp engines. They have quite extraordinary range of up to 1500 NM. The big engine versions with retracable gear were the 250/285 of which about 30 each ere built.
With a total volume of around 180 airframes, the HR100 is not exacly common. However, the fixed gear versions still have well over 100 airplanes flying.
It is certainly a nice tourer.
