I actually owned an original Thambar back in the day, complete with hood and center "dot" filter to accentuate the effect
As I recall, in addition to it being stupid expensive, like Noct price, the actual results were odd in use; some images would be spectacular, but most of mine were meh... (And no, it was NOT even close to being Mandler-esque in signature!) It was also another M lens with an extraordinarily long focus throw, another thing I never cottoned to in M glass, so instead of working it out, I sold after a short dating period as I simply never gelled with it. I suspect had I owned it with a digital M body things would have been different, as I'd have had the available volume of instant feedback to get its intricacies figured out.
My guess is this new one will be a lot of fun to play with; but my ultimate take is the resulting images are not going to be much different than what the $700 85mm Lomo Petzval lens available for most DSLRs delivers. I have one of these currently, and it absolutely creates that "turn of the century" look in landscapes and portraits. And it's relatively easy to focus and see the actual effect real-time on an SLR --- and as much as I love the M, that's one area they lack in... My take is given that one can own the Petzval AND say a new Nikon D850 for about half what the Thambar itself will cost, it would be the smarter way to have fun with early 20th century imaging.
Heck, here's an idea --- if anybody reasonably local gets one of the Thambars, let's meet for a day of shooting and we can produce side-by-side comparisons of the Thambar and Petzval. Could be really interesting!