They might not be quite as much of a household name as the likes of Aston Martin, Bentley, or Jaguar, but TVR has been carving out their own niche in British automotive history for the better part of eight decades. The is responsible for some of the maddest cars to ever come out of the UK, with a heady mix of high-powered engines and virtually zero driver assists.
They've also been heavily involved in British and international racing since their early days, with some of their craziest projects stemming from their need to homologate cars for various championships. But, mostly, TVR's cars were built for the road, and for drivers brave enough to take on the challenge of driving one. The company is currently in the process of a revival with a new Griffith heading for production soon, but until then, let's take a look back at ten of their most unhinged creations from decades past.
10 Tuscan
The history of the Tuscan nameplate begins way back in the Sixties, but it's the '90s incarnation of the car that most fans will remember. Production continued right up until TVR's closure in 2006, and several variants were offered throughout its seven years on sale.
The most powerful of those was the Tuscan S Mk2, which featured a six-cylinder engine making around 400 hp. That six-cylinder was the famous Speed Six, a unit that had been designed in-house by TVR and featured in many of their most famous later models.
9 3000M
TVR were famous for their inconsistent naming strategy which often left uninitiated buyers wondering how each model related to the next. A great example of this was the 3000M, which was one of the later iterations of the company's M Series.
There was a hatchback version of the 3000M called the Taimar, although they were mechanically identical underneath. A later version called the 3000M Turbo (or Taimar Turbo depending on the body style) became the first British performance car to feature a turbocharger.
8 450SEAC
After introducing the previous-generation 420SEAC just two years earlier, TVR debuted the 450SEAC in 1988. It was in production for just one year and featured the same chassis and bodywork as its predecessor, just with a larger 4.5L engine.
To keep things as light as possible, the body panels were made from Kevlar and fiberglass, and there were no safety features like airbags or ABS. The SEAC also signaled the change to Rover V8 engines instead of the previously used Ford V6 units.
7 Vixen
Before TVR's manufacturing heyday in the '80s and '90s, it was a relatively small carmaker that struggled to keep itself afloat. The Vixen helped it through one of its tougher periods, as it was a relative success both in the UK and in the US, with over 1,000 units sold overall.
It was significantly lighter and faster than the MG MGB GT from the same era, and it used a Ford Kent engine rather than relying on MG power like previous TVRs had. Produced between 1967 and 1973, the car was succeeded by the M Series which would mark the start of the brand's peak popularity.
6 Griffith 500
Sold throughout the Nineties and into the early Noughties, the Griffith remained popular throughout its production run with both critics and buyers. Later models were referred to as the Griffith 500, and they included a number of mechanical tweaks that differentiated them from earlier cars.
Despite most sports cars by that time coming with basic safety features, TVR held out and Griffiths are among the last sports cars to have had almost zero driver assists or airbags. There was also a Japanese special edition of the car available called the Blackpool B340 which featured in the now-legendary racing games Gran Turismo and Gran Turismo 2.
5 Trident
The Trident looks a little different from most of TVR's other cars, and that might be due to the fact that this rare prototype was actually coachbuilt in Italy. Designed by Trevor Fiore, the car was built by Carrozzeria Fissore and shown off at the 1965 Geneva Motor Show.
Originally, the car was planned for production, but financial issues at the company and an eventual takeover meant the project never happened. Instead, the design was sold to a local TVR dealer who created his own car company, Trident Cars, and made a limited run of these Italian-British mashups.
4 Sagaris
The last new model debuted before the closure of the original incarnation of TVR in 2006, the Sagaris is arguably their maddest-looking model to date. Its muscly design with sideways rear exhausts turned heads like almost no other car on the planet, and even today it can steal the limelight from vastly more expensive cars at shows.
Its incredible power and lack of grip made it a very difficult car to drive, but that was all part of its charm. It won over journalists and the public who were wowed by its design and improved build quality, but ultimately, it didn't sell well enough to stop TVR's bankruptcy, with only 211 units ever produced.
3 Cerbera
Despite their reputation, TVR wasn't all about knife-edge bare-bones sports cars that had no regard for the wellbeing of their driver. They also made the Cerbera, a more luxurious GT-styled car that famously had more power than grip and also... had no regard for the wellbeing of its driver.
So not too different to the usual fare, then. Nevertheless, the Cerbera aimed at making driving a TVR a slightly more pleasant experience, and it was the first model to use TVR's own newly-developed V8 engine.
2 Typhon
The TVR Typhon is arguably the best example of the company's confusing naming system, as only three road-legal cars ended up being produced and all three had different names, none of which were the Typhon. It all started with owner Peter Wheeler's dream of seeing TVRs at Le Mans, and so an entirely new design was needed.
Work started in 2000 and the project went through countless changes and delays until eventually it was abandoned altogether. The surviving three cars that did manage to leave the factory all had different specifications, although they all used a version of TVR's signature Speed Six engine.
1 Speed 12
The final crazy TVR is perhaps the most unhinged of them all. The Cerbera Speed 12, or just Speed 12, was originally intended to be the world's fastest performance car and a way for TVR to enter the GT1 racing class.
However, after a couple of years of development, it became clear that it was too powerful to be used on the road, eventually being declared unsafe for use by TVR executives. This led to them scrapping the project altogether before a single production vehicle was built, although one surviving prototype exists and was later sold to a private collector.