[Closed] English marque TVR

Al, go to their Website...

TVR. There are other listings if you Google TVR.

TVR

TVR, until recently, perhaps surprisingly, the largest British producer of road cars, i.e. the rest of our car industry is now not UK owned. TVR itself is now foreign owned. A niche producer of glass-fibre bodied high performance sports cars going back many years. Some success racing at Le Mans in the 60's and as recently as 2004. Spark Models produce a good series of TVR models.
http://www.sparkmodel.com/our_range/tvr.html

TVR, named after the founder's first name of Trevor, used to be based in Blackpool. I'm not sure they are still in business. In recent years they developed a reputation for very individually designed cars that were very quick and somewhat unreliable. Great to look at though and with a strong following. A good range of TVR models used to be available from SMTS - don't know if they still are though.

Ah TVR, one of whose models was, apparently, part styled by a dog

The story goes that, then owner Peter Wheeler's dog (a red setter from memory), bit a chunk out of a styling buck of the forthcoming Cereba model - Mr Wheeler approved of the change, which went into production.

Latterly TVR was Russian owned, but, cars are no longer made, although, there has been talk of production being resumed, possibly in Italy. A shame, as although, the cars were not the most reliable, they were dramatically styled with fantastic performance.

In the 60's, they had a small, ugly coupe stuffed with a Ford 260 V8 that was the proverbial bat.

Frank, in college I had a good buddy who was a pretty good SCCA driver. He had an Alfa Giuletta Spyder at the time. There was a Griffith dealer
in town and we went over to take a look---as it turns out, they offered us a
test drive in a white Griffith with the Ford 289. It was lightly raining that day.

We went for a test drive, and I was in virtual cardiac arrest the entire time.
That beast swapped ends several times. My friend Dennis said "I'd let you
drive, but I don't think I can control this thing and I'm pretty sure you can't!"
He got no argument from me. Geez, that thing was fast. We took it back to
the Griffith dealer in Towson, MD, and Dennis told the guy "you ought to be
locked up for selling this thing!" The guy just nodded and laughed!

I just checked my copy of "Modern Classics" by Rich Taylor. He said, and I
quote, "I've driven a Griffith ONCE, and vowed never to set foot in one again."
The weight was about 1400 pounds, the wheelbase 85 inches, and the
power-to-weight ratio was 1 hp to 7 pounds. That thing was ungodly, and
I've never forgotten the experience.

Later, as I recall, they switched to Mopar 260-cu. in. power, but the one we
drove was powered by a Ford 289. I checked the Spark Models website as
referenced, and it appears that the one sold in Britain as the Grantura was
the one we took out that day. Ugly, brutal, lovely!

Rick

Good story, Richard.

Ugly? Surely not! If you want ugly try a Rodius!

I always liked the Cortina Mk1 rearlights. The Rodius roofline was likened in a recent car mag to a bad loft conversion...reminded me of the irreverent comments that Small Car (later, Car) magazine used to make.

John, as I noted, it was ugly in a lovely way! I'm not sure that much effort was invested in its "styling." but I subscribe to the "less is more" and
"form follows function" schools, and from that perspective it was beautiful and
ugly at the same time.

Hope I cleared that up. It was a hoot to ride in, even if I didn't get to drive it.

Rick

As for me,I was at a loss for words to try to convey its looks. Now I have to find a picture to post

I found four pictures of the car in Jonathan Stein's "British Sports

Cars in America 1946-1981" if you have a copy or can find one. The author
gives all the details on how the car came to be, too. If you know about Monster
Miatas, the story's the same.

The Griffith was the Grantura Mk III with the Ford powerplant; the Granturas
were powered by MG engines. No one is ever going to confuse one with a Jaguar
E-Type---let's put it that way.

pic - Rodius?

photo no longer available

Pic - Rodius 2

photo no longer available

The second one is an improvement over the first, although not much of one!