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| Click for TVR Gallery |
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The British car industry is full of dreamers. At every local autoshow, a badly dressed entrepreneur will unveil a new supercar and proclaim that from a garden shed in Nowhereville, he's going to take on the might of Ferrari. Bold talk of 'series production' will follow before the car disappears into a 'development phase', never to be seen again. Names such as Strathcarron and Jensen have all flattered to deceive before being drowned in a vat of red ink.
But this tale of woe must be tempered by British success stories, of which TVR is the most intriguing. The company, founded by TreVoR Wilkinson in 1947, operates out of a less than salubrious factory in the seaside town of Blackpool. It is here that the company manufacturers everything from the engines to the chassis to the circuit boards. Even the seats are designed by TVR stylists and hand-stitched by a team of seamstresses.
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| Pretty much everything's made on-site in Blackpool |
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It is an extraordinary company that last year attracted the attention of 24-year-old Russian millionaire Nikolai Smolensky, who bought the company from its British owner, Peter Wheeler. Smolensky immediately halted production for two months to carry out much-needed quality improvements and cars were dispatched across the globe for hot- and cold-weather testing. He also delayed the introduction of the new Tuscan 2 and Sagaris... until now.
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