TVR - The Story of The Most Cursed Car Company | Up To Speed - YouTube

It's the boutique British

Manufacturer with the wildest sports car you've never seen bad names and bad luck couldn't keep this

upstart down because they found the tried-and-true formula of fun less weight and

My man, this is everything you need to know to get up to speed on TVR

Unless you British or into club racing you may have never heard of TVR

The odd-looking little sports cars are legendary for cram and giant engines and to featherweight chassis z' and raising hell on the tracks

But thanks to bad luck poor business decisions and even more bad luck now

They're just trying to claw their way

back in a 21st century that's traded visceral bliss for stats and

Nurburgring times it all started in

1946 when a 23 year old chap by the name of trevor wilkinson opened up his first automotive garage in Blackpool

England he called it Trev car motors which

Kind of sounds like a five-year-old made-up

Car company name about a year later when he was six his buddy Jack Picard joined him

They renamed the company TVR engineering sure that was just the first middle and last letters in Trev car

But at least it sounded like adults were in charge instead of focusing on working on other people's cars

They started developing their own and my 1949 TVR had built most of its official first car the TVR

Num1. These guys are awesome at making names

This rear wheel drive car was Frankenstein together using an eleven hundred and seventy two CC

Side-valve engine from a Ford van and the live axle springs dampers brakes and steering from a small British family car called the Morris eight

With the rolling chassis complete they hired coach builder les out that lets dale

Sorry les dale to body the car and that's where TV r's long history of no good very bad

Astoundingly awful luck begins. You see before les even got the body on the car

He crashed it the guys were able to repair the chassis and les managed to make the car look like a million bucks

well

Actually, he made it look like 325 British pounds because that's how much Trevor's cousin paid for it

But ever the optimist Trevor and Jack's set to work building the better TV our chassis sourcing running gear from various

manufacturers like Austin Ford and mgs and in

1955 TVR developed a new semi space frame with a backbone it allowed the driver to sit in the car

Rather than just on the car

With the drivers booty - only six inches off the ground

The center of gravity was low and that improved handling TVR paired the new frame with the VW bugs independent suspension

Which ensured it stayed glued to the track because you know bugs are

Known for their handling. Now this new short wheelbase chassis paired. Well with several engines the most notable of which was the Coventry climax

FWA the

FW stood for featherweight and it was a popular engine for small open-top racers because it offered lots and lots of her spurs

Per pound an American racer named ray Seidel ordered several TVRs with this engine pairing and wrapped them in

Beautiful aluminum bodies and it worked because race started kicking on the tracks of his home state of, New Hampshire

And people were noticing they were like live free or die that guy's fast

so fast

In fact that Ray partnered up with TVR to sell this little chassis in the US under the name plate

Jomar which was derived from I'm not kidding guys. It was derived from raised two kids. Nick's name's Joanna and Mark

It's as if Joe, Marv

and Trev car were always meant to be partners with everyone in the TVR bubble pumped about the

The Jomar they started cranking them out and shipping them to new hampshire sucks hurt, but they didn't really sell that well

Which ray thought it was because it was kind of ugly

So he suggested that TVR build a fastback version which of course they did because they're best buds bad at naming and in

1959 TVR came out with the grand cheer up

They advertised it with the slogan only nine hundred eighty pounds and it out handles everything

While the car handled great on the track, it didn't really handle great driving a grocery store or to work or to church her

Honestly back then the only places you really drove to or grocery stores work in church, you get my point

It wasn't a very good daily driver wasn't very good around the city and in 1962 TVR

engineering went bankrupt

Fortunately though TBR had a side hustle engineering company for exploiting tax loopholes

Which was aptly named grand sheera engineering

This associate company took over production of the grand tira and started a tradition of making huge publicity

Splashes the first being an expensive leap into the 24 hours of them all that same year

What a swing

They answered two grand cheers with mg engines in the 2-liter class at Lima and were

excited to see how the plucky little cars would perform but

they must have knocked over a salt shaker and driven under a ladder because

They failed both cars were crashed and hastily rebuilt just before the race one grande charrid

It'd n't make it to the start and the other one was the first car to be retired because it overheated after only

three laps in just a few months after their

Embarrassing outing outlet mall a Ford dealer from Long Island by the name of Andrew Griffith reached out with an idea that would change

TVR for Ferg

Andrew loved the grandeur chassis and seeing the success Carroll Shelby had with his AC Cobra

He thought he'd cram a 289 small-block v8 into the TVR. The only problem was that it didn't fit as big problem

So he asked TVR to make a special chassis to accommodate the powerplant in

1964 the griffith was born

Just keeping this naming tradition alive what's the name Griffith, although I don't have a lot of room to talk

I did name my car the pumphrey if I would do the Griffith was a bona fide home run and

orders poured in for the Cobra killer, but TBR's luck wasn't quite

good yet and a series of Doc strikes in both the US and

England made it hard for TVR to ship Griffiths to the US and since TVR couldn't sell cars

They couldn't pay forward for the drivetrain

So Ford was like yo, dude, you're cut off and TVR had shut the factory

however, TVR already had a concept car designed by the

Italians called the Trident named after the gum and they scrapped all their money together to show the Trident at the Geneva Car Show in

March of

1965 where it grabbed the attention of Arthur Lilly and his son Martin now the Lilly's had engineering backgrounds in a business

assembling Lotus Elan kit cars

They already owned shares and grandeur

Engineering and when they heard TVR was going under the Lily's decided to buy the company and turn things around the Lily's

Immediately hired a guy named Jerry Marshall to drive the Griffith in races

Jerry was sort of like the Ricky Bobby of England and fans loved that

He drifted corners and joked about driving. Tiny racecars saying stuff like I couldn't get my boots in that call

Jimmie Johnson, I mean like yeah, man, she's a good race out there. I couldn't get my people in that car

Okay back to you in the studio Rutledge

Not only was he hilarious with his peeps in the car jokes

He also won a lot now TVR leveraged Gary's success to launch the Vixen in

1967 for the Vixen TVR took a step back from the v8 crammed in a small car formula

So the Vixen came with smaller engine options ranging from superlight

1,300 CC for bangers to V sixes now

They were selling between five and eight cars a week and business was definitely good

but not great and TVR decided that the brand needed to make another big publicity splash so

They hired model Helen Jones to pose naked with the vixen at the 1970 British Motor Show

And it was a huge success

because of course it was the Vixens went flying off the shelves and everyone was excited to see what

TVR had planned for the next British Motor Show in

1971 and guess what guys they did not disappoint

They rolled out two new cars Basanti and the M series. Okay, and since now there were two new models

Tdr. Figured hmm, maybe two naked girls

Now you might be asking yourself because I

Did - how much naked is too much naked if you asked no one there's no such thing

But if you ask people at the British Motor Show, the answer is - the show threatened to ban TVR for life

But it was all worth it orders for TVR M series is started rolling in it seemed like nothing could stop them now

That's a good story. That's like you keep doing it is that it happens, you know, and then their factory burned down

Oh, you gotta be kidding me bad. I know

So they're low on dough and they needed to rush to debut their newest car

The Tasman the Tasman was designed by former Lotus man Oliver

Winterbottom and yes, that is the most adorable names that these lips have ever uttered

When's your bottoms wedge design was a complete departure from previous TV ours and was not particularly

well received

In fact TV our boss Martyn Lily described the car as a big disappointment

Which is also how my dad scribes me now as they say

Timing is everything

And TV ours timing

Sucks, okay

The commercial launch of the Tasman in 1980

Coincided with a huge recession in England and at this point Martin had had enough so he sold the company to another TVR

enthusiast a guy named Peter wheeler under wheelers management and the British recession TVR didn't

Sell a lot of cars, but they did win a bunch of races in

The Tasman last year of production the higher powered 450 seac variant

121 of the 24 races that it entered fast-forwards in 1986 TVR debuted the S series

They threw away the wedge design

No one liked good idea and returned to the classic looks of the successful M series the base model v6

s was a huge success for daily drivers and weekend racers alike and the optional v8s became a bucket list car for

Enthusiasts the v8s went from 0 to 60 in only 4.9 seconds was faster than the Ferrari Testarossa

the Lotus has pre in the Porsche Carrera - the 90s was definitely the best time for

TVR and it looked like all that bad luck was a thing of the past

Oh good, you know these guys have really been through it. But you know what they stuck dinner scruples and it got through it

They even brought back the Griffith nameplate in 1991 along with a luxury version called the chimera in

1992 and a 2+2 coupe a 96 called the Kerr Bera me my sister's used to love player care bears TVR also

manufactured their own engines for the first time the AJ p6 and the a

Jp-8 better known as the speed 6 and the speed a then in 1999

TVR debuted the Tuscan and the styling of this car was bonkers

It looks like a Dodge Viper had a baby with a spider

All right

The headlights were a bunch of different eyes

And the taillights were mounting super low right above the exhaust

The turn signals were on the B pillars and door handles were buttons under the side mirrors. There were also two hoods

one small one that gave you access to almost nothing and the second one that was bolted down a

Hood that's bolted down

well

The battery just happened to be mounted upside down

Under there and exposed to the underside of the car and debris would get in it and like the entire engine bay on fire

With no way to put it out without unbolting the hood

Then in 2003 TVR debuted their last new model

You can actually get in and drive the Sagaris

now the Sagaris was wheelers swan song and the epitome of everything TVR had become under his ownership at

twenty-three hundred pounds that weighed the same as a new Miata, but under the hood was a

406 horsepower

naturally aspirated inline six

That's amazing

Now it's at this point that you may be wondering James

Why haven't I seen any of these new TV ours at cars and coffee or on bring a trailer?

Well, it's because of wheelers stubbornness and questionable business decisions. He didn't like ABS

All right. He didn't like airbags

He didn't like Stability control because he thought they gave drivers a false sense of security and as a result

You can't drive these cars in the US, which is the first time TBR's bad luck

Became our bad luck

Trippi

Right after the debut of the cigars wheeler sold the company to a Russian banker named Nikolai

Smolenski and under Nikolai

No new models have come out now in 2013 Nikolai sold TVR to some British businessmen who formed TVR?

Automotive Limited well

They primarily aimed to provide parts for classic TV ours still on the road in 2017

The group did debut a brand new Griffith featuring a Cosworth enhanced 5-liter v8 borrowed from a Ford Mustang GT

TVR said the car would go on sale in 2019, but

Check the calendars that didn't happen. I guess the only

People with worse luck than TVR are the auto enthusiasts that love them

I want to give a big thanks to capes for sponsoring this episode of up speed cheeps offered

Scientifically proven treatments both over-the-counter and prescription that can help fight the symptoms of hair loss

I think we'd love to know James. What is the number one symptom of hair loss

I'm glad you asked the number one symptom of hair loss is losing your hair keeps treatments are up to

90% effective and reducing and stopping further hair loss. It has more 5-star reviews than any of its competitors and nearly

100,000 men trusted for their hair loss prevention medication if you're ready to take action and prevent hair loss go to keeps

Calm slash up to speed 52 receive

50% off your first order that's K e EP

S.com slash up teo speed fifty support the bridge that support Donna

Receive 50% off your first order thank you guys so much for watching this show and everything else on donut media

I'm really excited to tell you guys about our podcast. It has it's very own YouTube channel

There's a link down there

We do a two-part series on the midnight club the legendary Underground Racing syndicate

And we deliver a message to the American public from the Midnight Club. Thanks for watching. I love you