TVR was founded in Blackpool, Lancashire, in 1946 by Trevor Wilkinson, whose surname (minus a couple of letters) gave the company its name. Over the following decades the business moved between several sites around Blackpool, from an early garage workshop to a larger factory on Bristol Avenue from 1970, but always stayed in the town.
TVR built small, lightweight sports cars around a simple steel backbone chassis and glassfibre bodywork, starting with the Grantura in 1958. Ownership passed to Martin Lilley in 1965, then to Peter Wheeler in 1981, an era that produced some of the marque’s best-known cars: the Tasmin, Chimaera, Griffith, Cerbera, Tuscan and Sagaris, most powered by large, unassisted engines that gave TVRs a reputation for raw, unfiltered performance.
Russian businessman Nikolai Smolensky bought TVR in 2004, and car production at Blackpool ended in 2006. The Griffith name was revived in 2017 under a new ownership group led by Les Edgar, with plans for a factory in Ebbw Vale, Wales, but that arrangement fell through and, as of the mid-2020s, no production cars had reached customers. TVR was acquired by Charge Holdings, a British electric-vehicle company, in November 2025, which has said completing and delivering the delayed Griffith remains its first priority.
