The Four TVR cars We Love

Cars

They’re weird. They’re fast and they were riotously, fundamentally British.

This much everyone knows about TVR cars. But here are four of the TVR branded motors that we love the best – a couple of which, you might not have known about – or at least met in the flesh…

The Trident was a Ford V8 powered prototype designed in real style by Carrozzeria Fissore in Savigliano, Italy. Trevor Fiore was the man who put pen to paper for the coachbuilder. Fissore, who are also responsible for the body of the Detomaso Vallelunga and the Alpine A 310, displayed a prototype Trident coupé at the Geneva Motor Show in 1965 – and despite what was according to the webs a positive public reaction to the car, it was not well received by TVR boss Jack Griffith, and so was never put into production. Shame. There’s a real Italianate dash to the Trident which calls to mind Maseratis and Ferraris of the era.



The TVR Vixen Series 1 launched at the British motor show 1967, and came with an in-house built fibreglass shell as well as a variety of engines from Triumph and Ford. It was a very period-correct design, evocative of the swing and the dash of that decade – and it sold well until its discontinuation in 1973. More of the company’s trademark travails were to cause a break in production after its rebirth as the mainstay Tuscan. We think the Vixen is the cutest of all TVRs.



Legend has it that the TVR Tina, a strange beast based on the underpinnings of a Hillman Imp, got its name by chopping the first syllable off the front of Ford’s everyman star The Cortina. Either that or it was named after the daughter of a bloke who worked in for TVR. In any case, the two prototypes made for the 1966 Motor Shows were about as far as the concept got – which is a shame because Britain could have done with a car that represented futurist ideals!



A snarling, snaffling beast with TVR’s speed six four litre engine, producing 380 BHP and around the same figure of torque – the Sagaris is perhaps the most outrageously TVR-ish of all the cars the brand produced. Louvred and vented to within an inch of it’s life, the handling specialist from Noble worked on the wide tracked, stripped down project that eschewed any sort of driver aid. According to anyone who has driven it, it works brilliantly and is certainly as unique a design as any to have emerged from a British motor works. If the traits of the typical TVR are speed, power, individuality and an unwillingness to compromise, the Sagaris must be the definitive TVR. Here’s hoping the phoenix rises from the flames – and when it does the cars it produces looks and feels like this.



CLICK TO ENLARGE

One Response to “The Four TVR cars We Love”