TVR was an independent British manufacturer of sports cars based in the English town of Blackpool, Lancashire. The company manufactured lightweight sports cars with powerful engines and was the third-largest specialised sports car manufacturer in the world, offering a diverse range of coupés and convertibles, most using an in-house straight-6 cylinder engine design, others an in-house V8. TVR sports cars are composed of tubular steel frames, cloaked in aggressive fibreglass body designs.
TVR's two arms were TVR Engineering, which manufactured sports cars and grand tourers, and TVR Power, their power-train division. The company has a turbulent recent history and an uncertain future (see below).
History TVR was founded in 1947 by Trevor Wilkinson, under the name of Trevcar Motors. In 1954, Wilkinson changed the name of the company to TVR by removing two vowels and a consonant from his first name. The first car was built in 1949. In 1953 the concept of glass-reinforced plastic bodywork over a tubular steel backbone chassis was born, and has continued to this day. Many of the early cars were sold in kit form to avoid a British tax on assembled cars but in the 1970s the tax loophole was closed and the kit-form option was removed.
In the late 1950s, TVRs were powered by 4-cylinder engines from Coventry Climax, BMC or Ford, the performance models having Shorrock superchargers. As with many other British sports cars, engine sizes remained under two litres, and all produced less than 100 bhp (75 kW). Most TVRs were sold in the domestic British market, although small numbers were exported.
In the 1960s, American motor dealer Jack Griffith decided to put a 4.7 litre V8 engine from an AC Cobra he owned into a TVR Grantura, in much the same way that V8s were first transplanted into AC Cobras (It is in honour of Jack Griffith that the TVR Griffith was so-named).
Towards the end of the 1960s, TVR returned to Ford for a 2994 cc V6 Zodiac engine for the new TVR Tuscan (1967) racer. This produced 128 bhp (95 kW), giving a 0-60 mph (0-97 km/h) time of 8.3 seconds, which was good performance for the time.
The 1970s saw a number of engines used in TVRs (particularly the 'M Series'), mainly Triumph 2500s, Ford Essex V6 and Ford 1600 Crossflows.
I knew somebody local that had one of the older late 80s Tasmin's in black. It was a rather interesting car for sure - a car that all you have to do is buy it and literally NO ONE has one like it.
However there was always all sorts of driveability issues as mentioned. And honestly with a lot of the older TVRs their fit & finish is not up to par for what they originally cost. A Lotus Esprit would be a much better buy if one were searching for a comparable car in that category, in terms of uniqueness and foreign make.
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08:40 PM
Boondawg Member
Posts: 38235 From: Displaced Alaskan Registered: Jun 2003
If its gonna be a TVR, its gotta be a Speed 12! (<prototype) 960 bhp from a 7.7l V12. (also the Cerbera on the far right of the second row in the OP pic is a Cerbera Speed 12.)
[This message has been edited by Xyster (edited 10-17-2012).]
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12:36 AM
Xyster Member
Posts: 1444 From: Great Falls MT Registered: Apr 2011
Ahhh the Sagaris, what a beautiful machine. The colors that some of the more recent models have come out with are astounding.
I don't know if I could bring myself to own an older English sports car even if I had cash coming out of the wazzoo, part of the equation of car ownership for me is a certain level of reliability. Most exotics fail miserably when it comes to that
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01:26 AM
PFF
System Bot
Raydar Member
Posts: 41135 From: Carrollton GA. Out in the... country. Registered: Oct 1999
(<prototype)
