All-new TVR Griffith hit with delays

Stand by for yet more British finger pointing at the EU after an enforced delay in building the new factory for reborn sports-car brand, TVR.

While the brand showed its all-new Griffith sports car at last year’s Goodwood Revival meeting in September, British magazine

The Griffith was planned to be the first product from the private rich-guy consortium that bought TVR from Russia’s Nikolai Smolensky, for whom the operation became a wasted plaything.

The Welsh Government, desperate to keep the boutique manufacturer in Wales, bought three percent of TVR and loaned it £2 million early this year.

However, that automatically pushed TVR onto the radar of the European Union by flagging a state-funding rules warning. It meant that instead of the tender for the upgrade on TVR’s ancient Ebbw Vale plant going out across Wales, it now has to go to tender across the EU.

The tendering process will takes a minimum of seven months, plus another six months or more for the construction work.

Effectively, work on the factory project cannot even begin until January next year, according to Autocar, even though TVR originally insisted it would be delivering cars in the first quarter of next year.

Yet another 911 rival, the two-seat Griffith is based around the iStream modular architecture designed by legendary ex-McLaren F1 designer Gordon Murray.

It will use a steel frame with carbon fibre-bonded inner panels to improve its rigidity and strength, while keeping its weight down to 1250kg. It will be powered by a mega-horsepower Cosworth version of Ford’s 5.0-litre Mustang V8, developing 375kW.

TVR claims a 0-100km/h time of less than four seconds for the rear-drive, front-engined sports car, along with a 320km/h-plus top speed.

It uses a Tremec six-speed manual gearbox mounted above its flat floor, which with its 4314mm overall length and 1850mm width, is claimed to give it significant aerodynamic downforce.

The 72-year-old TVR brand was once one of the UK’s most interesting sports-car brands, but was bought by Russian oligarch Alexander Smolensky as a gift for his son in 2004.

It was all but moribund as a sports-car operation, though a thriving hub of Machiavellian business moves, when the current owners, a consortium named TVR Automotive Ltd, bought it from Smolensky in 2013.