Gordon Murray is a bit of a legend. As a young man he left his native South Africa for the UK, intent on designing and building Formula 1 cars. He did this in an era unrecognizable to the F1 fan of today. Budgets were tiny—the entire sport could have survived on the annual budget for even the least-well funded team in 2015. Despite, or perhaps because of, these limited resources, his ingenuity shone through, and many revolutionary designs issued forth from his pen. Post-F1 Murray has been using that ingenuity to rethink the way road cars are designed, something that a very lucky few have experienced behind the wheel of a Light Car Company Rocket or McLaren F1. That may be about to change thanks to the resurrection of sports car company TVR.
Founded in 1947, TVR—an abbreviation of founder Trevor Wilkinson’s first name—was a low-volume manufacturer of hairy-chested sports cars built in Blackpool, England. The company went through a number of different owners, building up a cult following thanks to its adherence to a formula of lightweight sports cars with rather wild styling, plenty of horsepower, and a charming lack of modern safety features like ABS, airbags, traction control, and so on.
Via Steve Crandall.