TVR

TVR is a British manufacturer of lightweight sports cars with powerful engines, based in the town of Blackpool in Lancashire. Grace's Guide records that it was founded in 1947 by Trevor Wilkinson under the name Trevcar Motors, that the first car was built in 1949, and that Wilkinson shortened the name to TVR in 1954 by dropping two vowels and a consonant from his first name. From 1953 its cars combined glass-reinforced plastic bodywork with a tubular steel backbone chassis, and many early cars were sold in kit form to avoid a British tax on assembled cars. Engines came at different times from Coventry Climax, BMC, Ford, Triumph and Rover, and under the ownership of Peter Wheeler the company moved back to large V8 engines before developing its own AJP8 V8 and the Speed 6 straight-six. The source describes two arms, TVR Engineering for the cars and TVR Power for the power-train division.