In the 75 years since Henry Ford first showed the world one way to manufacture an automobile, almost as many alternatives have come and gone. Some have been adopted, most have been discarded ignominiously to the scrap heap of industrial progress. Today, the production line of a typical mainstream manufacturer is the epitome of clinical efficiency, often with its roots firmly in the lean and highly evolved industry benchmark: the Toyota Production System.

First-time visitors to TVR’s factory in Blackpool, Lancashire, can be forgiven for thinking that the company has discovered an all together new way of designing and building a motor car. That’s not to say, however, that TVRs are built any less efficiently than the Toyotas of this world, just that where others have evolved, first impressions at TVR indicate more of a ... proliferation. To understand the company, its cars and their origins, we need to regress.
 

Imagine, if you will, that you are 12 years old and obsessed with cars (not that difficult for some of us). Frustrated by the bland uniformity and uninspired functionality of modern motor cars, picture the four-wheeled automotive sculpture that you would likely design on the back of your school book. Close your eyes and listen very carefully and you can just about hear the muted cacophony of a highly tuned multi-valve V12 on tick-over. Assuming, in your adolescent daydream, that the family garage is your factory, visualise the many half-forgotten engine and component modifications occupying every available space, each one the manifestation of a nocturnal epiphany, another crazy idea which might just squeeze out more power or speed. Imagine this on an industrial scale, mix in sufficient infrastructure to be simultaneously creative and profitable, and you’re not far off today’s reality at TVR.

TVR proves that the correlation between these two variables is not necessarily as the Porsches and the Ferrari’s of this world would have us believe. By means of a carefully balanced mix of skill, traditional craftsmanship and advanced manufacturing technology, TVR is able to produce exciting and well built cars which probably would never make it off the drawing board in a company run by accountants. Cars like the new Tuscan Speed Six. With everything designed and built in-house, including body, chassis, 360-hp engine and all the switch gear and dials, these cars are unique, highly desirable and temptingly affordable.

The Early Days 

Where most cars designed and built in the 1990s are politically correct understatements, apologetically sipping gas and surreptitiously blending in, TVRs are a shameless celebration of the sports car breed, dressed in the automotive equivalent of Versace and using technology and materials most modern race teams would be familiar with.

But the TVR spirit seems to belong to a different age, a world when roads were quiet and leafy, when a cardiovascular workout could be had by merely “dropping” the clutch, and when drivers of high-powered motor cars were held in the kind of esteem normally reserved for venturesome aviators.

Back in 1947, in an austere postwar Britain, a young and restless engineer by the name of Trevor Wilkinson (TreVoR) built himself a light alloy special based on an Alvis Firebird rolling chassis. Just two years after those early efforts, the very first TVR emerged with its own custom-designed chassis powered by a Ford side-valve engine. Produced in very small numbers, these simple but devastatingly effective sports cars soon built an ardent following of motoring enthusiasts, all looking for power, agility and maximum fun . . . for not a lot of money.

The TVR identity we’re familiar with today was formulated in the mid-1950s with the introduction of the Grantura. Fast, agile and good looking, the Grantura used a lightweight body based on a strong tubular steel chassis and was propelled by a powerful big-block engine. 

Over the next 30 years, a succession of such cars were created by TVR, all providing the requisite number of “bangs-per-buck” and regularly embarrassing the industry’s racing aristocrats: Jaguar and Ferrari. But it was in the late 1980s, with the introduction of the TVR “S,” that the company entered the purple patch which continues to this day.

Under the guidance of the new owner and chairman, Peter Wheeler, TVR had been taking the low-cost muscle car concept to new extremes, finally shaking off the unfair and misplaced “kit car” label and the home-built quality connotations that come with it.

In the few years since, the uprated 320-bhp Griffith 500 has enhanced the original concept and been joined by the elegant and pragmatic, but no less exciting, Chimera convertible, also available with the 5-litre 320- bhp V8.

Already earmarked as a future classic is the very latest addition to the TVR lineup. The all-new TVR Tuscan Speed Six is a masterful combination of retrospective styling, classic sports car dynamics and twenty first century technology. 

Styled and built entirely by hand, the two-seat convertible Tuscan Speed Six looks like a coupe and embodies the very essence of traditional Gran Turismo motoring. Employing a 360-bhp straight six engine and weighing less than 1,000 kg (about 2,200 lb), the eye-catching Tuscan can be a mile-eating continent-crosser or, when the mood takes you, more fun to drive than should ever, some say, be legally allowed.

Engine Development

One could be forgiven for thinking that where others have blood, the men and women at TVR have petroleum. Concerned only with building the very best automobile they are capable of, no one at TVR has time for recalcitrant machinery or anything that stands between them and the ultimate driving experience.

It is this infectious and uncompromising desire to recreate the childhood dream of thousands which permeates all departments at TVR, including the engine development department, home of the company’s Haas VF-3 vertical machining centre.

The VF-3 is TVR’s very first CNC machine tool. Up until the arrival of the Haas, most complex machining was outsourced to local subcontractors, with more simple work being carried out on the company’s manual knee-type mills.

Presiding over the VF-3, and instrumental in the company’s decision to purchase the machine, is Gavin Beach. As a development engineer for his previous employer, Oxfordshire-based Reynard Racing Cars, Beach was also a key player in Reynard’s decision to buy three Haas machines. “We knew exactly what we were looking for when we decided to buy a CNC mill,” says Beach. “I was very impressed with the Haas machines at Reynard, I knew what the machines were capable of and I knew what it would enable us to do at TVR.”

Beach’s enthusiasm for the Haas wasn’t lost on the holders of the company purse strings. “Because there was no need to consider other machines, we saved a lot of time. It was just a question of talking through our needs with Haas Automation UK, and choosing the right machine and rotary,” he claims. “Being the company’s first CNC machine tool, I think there was some concern that we might not fully exploit the machine, that it might be a little surplus to our requirements. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Since the machine arrived we’ve kept it very busy, and we have plenty of ideas for keeping it even busier in the future.” 

In keeping with the philosophy of enthusiasts building cars for enthusiasts, there are no job titles at TVR. So, although everyone has a broad remit according to their skills base and experience, there are no internal barriers stopping employees from one department getting involved in almost any activity in another.

"Since installing the VF-3 a queue of people has appeared,” says Beach, “all either with components which they’d like to be machined on the Haas, or just keen to learn what it’s capable of.” 

The VF-3 currently spends most of its time machining components and housings for TVR’s homegrown straight six engine, but what little free time is available has so far been spent redesigning chassis and suspension components for the company’s GT race car.

"Many of the parts we are doing for the GT car will be very short run, perhaps only 6-12 examples of each in the course of a season,” says Beach. “However, where in the past we’ve used fabricated components, we can now use the Haas to machine them from solid, simultaneously increasing strength and reducing weight.”

Straight Six

Those automobile manufacturers that can afford it often invest hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and build new power plants for their production vehicles. To avoid these crippling costs, TVR is bound to using engines from other companies, and for some time the cars have been synonymous with the tried and tested Rover V8 unit, available in either 4.0, 4.2, 4.5 or 5.0 configuration.
 

Using the Haas VF-3, the engine development department is currently machining 20 crankshafts per week for the straight six power unit. Cast in austempered ductile iron, the crank is held between a tailstock and a Haas HRT 310 rotary table. A tipped mill with a flat underside is brought down to machine a flat surface on the first of the crank’s main bearings. The HRT is then indexed 4.8 degrees and another flat is machined. This process continues for each main bearing until all four have 75 flat sides each. Through this process the maximum amount of material can be removed, minimising the total time necessary to grind the bearings to the correct tolerance.

Having such a high unit value, machining the crankshaft right the first time is extremely important, and TVR have been very careful to make the metal removal process as quick and accurate as possible. “Production of the crankshaft has only just begun,” says Beach. “But so far, I’m happy to say, the machine and the rotary table have worked perfectly. No problems and no scrap.”

Before the arrival of the Haas, the crankshafts were sent out to have the excess metal removed. Apart from the extra work involved in shipping and receiving the cranks, the actual cutting cycle per component was approximately six times slower than the current in-house arrangement. 

The Bell Housing

The aluminium bell housing for TVR’s straight six has been given the Haas treatment from start to finish, concept to working example. Where the previous version was made by hand, the pattern for the new cast bell housing was designed on the company’s HyperMill CAD software and drip fed directly to the Haas, which then machined the mould pattern from model board. Beach found the whole process particularly impressive. “Although the cutting forces involved were low, it was quite something watching the Haas produce the mould pattern from a solid block of model board so quickly and so accurately. It was a perfect reproduction of the 3D CAD drawing.” 

Once cast, the unmachined bell housings are mounted on the VF-3 on a three stage fixture incorporating two static stages and one using the HRT 310. 

The bell housing fixture makes maximum use of the VF-3’s 48" table and has a production cadence of one finished bell housing every 30 minutes. 

According to Beach, the finished article produced from the handmade mould was a pretty inaccurate affair. “Although the mounting holes were in the right position, the casting wall thickness varied greatly. With the new Haas-machined version, we have much greater control over the wall thickness and the positions of the strengthening ribs. They’re exactly the dimensions and positions we programmed at the design stage, allowing us to produce a much lighter component.”

Racing

As with many of its industry compatriots, the reputation and enigma surrounding the TVR name was established on the race track and is currently maintained by a GT works team and an army of weekend amateurs. 

TVR made its first serious motorsport mark when it entered a three Grantura works effort in the 1962 Le Mans 24 hours. Throughout the 1960s, the 1970s and into the 1980s the marque was an ever present front runner in a number of series, both at the professional level and the club level. In the ’70s there were frequent works-supported entries in the Prodsports championship, with notable successes in the 1979 and 1980 seasons: a 3000M winning every race it entered in the latter.

Race circuits around the UK had been the company’s shop window, its medium for delivering the TVR message to the growing number of enthusiasts. Not to be out done, TVR launched the Tuscan Challenge, a one-make series aimed at the professional and the amateur alike. 

A race-going TVR Tuscan weighs just 800 kilograms (approximately 1,760 pounds) and develops more than 450 bhp. With considerably more grunt than grip, these true “hairy-chested” sports cars exploit a concept as old as motor racing itself, giving race fans the drama and close finishes often lacking from the high financed upper echelons of modern motor sport.

Now in its tenth season, the TVR challenge has built up a worldwide following thanks to regular screenings on satellite and cable TV. Grids have set new records for this level of motor racing, with two and sometimes three races being scheduled to accommodate all of the entries.

Always with its eye on the big prize, TVR has continued to develop its GT race entry in the shape of a heavily modified Cerbera competing in the 1998 British GT series and the British rounds of the FIA GT series. The striking looking Cerbera GT scored its first outright win in the 1998 BRDC GT race at Donnington Park, England. 

It is also the company’s most serious assault to date on the FIA GT series, and is the car TVR hopes will lead to eventual victory at the prestigious 24 hour Le Mans.