"New car will have great looks and noise" - New owner

folarin okunola

June 5, 2015 4:57 PM

Blackpool-based and rather beardy niche Brit car maker TVR enjoyed a typically rollercoaster existence for most of its life.

TVR Sagaris

TVR has announced it will celebrate its 70th anniversary in 2017 in the best way possible: by unleashing an all-new, back-to-basics sports car.

It will be no mean feat. Blackpool-based and rather beardy niche Brit car maker TVR enjoyed a typically rollercoaster existence for most of its life. But in the 1990s, TVR saw its stock go through the roof thanks to a series of splendidly deranged rocketships, like the Chimaera, Griffith and Cerbera.

The company was piloted by the eccentric and much-missed Peter Wheeler, who ploughed such a furiously idiosyncratic furrow that even his dog Ned was said to be part of the design team. Rarely an issue of the magazine or an episode of TopGear went by without someone rhapsodising about these wonderful cars. Usually out of the side window.

Wheeler bailed in 2004 after selling up to youthful Russian son-of-an-oligarch, Nikolay Smolensky. A difficult, decade-long hiatus followed, until news broke in 2013 that a new consortium, headed by former computer games company entrepreneur Les Edgar, had rescued the company from a seemingly terminal decline.

More radio silence ensued. Then earlier this week sources confirmed that New TVR would unite former Brabham and McLaren technical genius Gordon Murray with engineering powerhouse Cosworth. This is very good news indeed.

folarin okunola