UK – Led by a fresh management team, the brand – established in 1947 – will make its comeback with a new sports car designed and built in Britain, in collaboration with Gordon Murray Design and Cosworth. The project has already spent one year in development.
TVR says the vehicle will “continue the tradition of a classic British, two-seat sports car with a composite ground-effect aero chassis and body package using Gordon Murray Design’s innovative iStream technology”. It will feature a front engine with rear-wheel drive and a manual transmission, powered by a normally aspirated, dry-sumped V8 engine from Cosworth.
The iStream technology, which entered development more than 15 years ago, is an assembly process billed as “a complete rethink and redesign of the traditional automotive process” and potentially “the biggest revolution in high-volume manufacture since the Model T”. It is claimed that, compared with a conventional factory, iStream can reduce the size of a plant by 20%, capital investment by 80% and CO2 by a “significant” amount, at the same time as being flexible enough to produce multiple variants.
“We are a well-funded, well-supported organisation and boast a vastly experienced management team,” commented Les Edgar, chairman of TVR. “We are here to stay and we have a fully evolved ten-year plan for product and business development, and are committed to deliver on all the targets we have set ourselves – as we have done to date.”
Further specifications for the new TVR will be made public later this year; production is scheduled to begin in 2017.