TVR is an independent British manufacturer of sports cars based in the English town
of Blackpool, Lancashire. The company manufactures lightweight sports cars with powerful
engines and is 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 are TVR Engineering, which manufactures sports cars and grand tourers,
and TVR Power, their power-train division. The company has a turbulent recent history
and an uncertain future.
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...