TVR: Why we think it’s all over

An update that won’t come as a surprise to many surrounding the resurrection of TVR suggests that the project, led by Les Edgar and launched to some fanfare at the Goodwood Revival in 2017, appears to have come to the end of the road. The latest additions to the tower of evidence that indicate as much include the resignation of car industry stalwart and TVR CEO Jim Berriman as a director of the business in May 2025 and the financial accounts for 2024 being overdue according to filings at Companies House. Oh, and the small issue of having no platform to build a car on or factory to build it in.

The latest TVR rebirth story started back in 2013. Edgar along with his consortium first acquired the rights to TVR from then owner Nikolai Smolenski 12 years ago and laid down his plans quite early on. The new TVR would be constructed on Gordon Murray’s iStream platform and be powered by a Ford or GM-sourced V8, depending on your preference. Built and developed in the UK, the targets were modest (500 units of the First Edition Griffith priced at £90,000) but achievable. On paper at least.

£500,000 of funding was secured from the Welsh Government along with an additional £2m from the Welsh Assembly to go towards development costs of the Griffith, whilst it would also pick up the £12.35 million bill to buy and renovate the proposed factory in Ebbw Vale, South Wales. By December 2018 a crack or two started to appear. 

European Rules on state funding were, according to TVR, creating delays on completing the work required at the 180,000 square foot production facility. These required tenders for any work to be shared across the EU trading block.

18 months later TVR was looking for more funding to meet the requirements of the Welsh Government who insisted the company had the funds to start production before it would hand over the keys to the factory. So followed a hop across the Irish Sea to raise £25m on the Dublin Stock Exchange followed by a claim by TVR that it had £40m worth of orders and the initial 500-car production run was sold out. Deal done, let’s get building V8 Griffiths! But wait, more people wanted to invest.

Along came Ensorcia Metals, part of the Ensorcia Group that was established in 2016 to ‘develop a sustainable battery materials supply chain’. The Group wanted to invest to allow both parties to develop a three-car range of electric TVR road cars, which would help Ensorcia establish itself as an automotive battery manufacturer. How they thought TVR could bring this electric idea to fruition when it appeared to be struggling to get a comparatively simple V8 sportscar to market is, seemingly, a question that will never be answered. Ensorcia is still part of TVR today, the majority shareholder in fact through Ensorcia Automotive, a Cayman Islands registered company. Edger’s stake in TVR is thought to be less than 10 percent. 

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As time passed, depositors walked away, the loans made by the different entities in Wales were called in and costs continued to rise as legislation forced fundamental changes to the original Griffith concept. Edgar even talked about TVR looking for other options to the Ebbw Vale factory to build the Griffith in. Which went down well in South Wales. 

Then there are the other factors that signal the end of TVR’s resurrection. The original plan to use Gordon Murray’s iStream chassis technology to build the Griffith was a sound one, but in 2023 Forseven (who recently merged with McLaren) acquired Gordon Murray Technologies and with it the rights to iStream, leaving TVR without a platform to build any of its cars on.

Not that it had anywhere to build them, because at the end of 2023 it lost the right to use the factory in the Ebbw Vale. Although it did announce days later it would open its first brand centre at Thruxton circuit in Hampshire. That hasn’t happened either. Nothing has since, beside the aforementioned departures, slack time keeping from the accountants and the MOT expiring on the loan Griffith. 

TVR is a brand that has tugged at the heart strings of many a car enthusiast since its birth in 1947. Like all low-volume British sports car companies, it enjoyed incredible highs with magnificent products and disastrous lows (despite the products still impressing). Under Peter Wheeler’s ownership it established itself as a top tier competitor in the sports car arena that genuinely worried, and certainly got under the skin of Porsche and others. That passion, support and love for TVR remains today. Its cars are firmly established as icons from an era few will forget. 

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Eight years on from its latest rebirth we’re calling it: TVR is, with regret and great sadness, dead. Unfortunately for those who want TVR to be alive and kicking today, there's more chance of the Monty Python parrot coming back to life than there is of a new Griffith making production. Trust us, we wish this wasn’t the case.