Gary Cooper Interviews Trevor Wilkinson is a remarkable man. Not many Brits have made a significant impact on the development of the electric guitar, but Trevor Wilkinson is one who has. Creator the Wilkinson vibrato system beloved of heavy metal players everywhere, he has worked with many of the biggest guitar makers in the business, developing and refining their products and today has a thriving career, both as a consultant for guitar makers and as a manufacturer of customising parts. A slightly altered version of this interview appeared in the September issue of the UK MI trade magazine MI Pro. A completely different 'player-orientated' interview will appear elsewhere, sometime in 2006 and will, eventually, make its way onto this site. INTERVIEWS: TREVOR WILKINSON Even with the best will in the world, it's hard to think of many Britons who have made an impact on the international guitar business. Try to get beyond the (relatively small) contribution made by Jim Burns and you're immediately among the ranks of gifted, but essentially individual, craftsmen.

But there is one grand exception - Trevor Wilkinson, whose name first became familiar twenty years ago and is even more prominent today, as parts and devices stamped with his imprimatur are turning up on an increasingly varied range of models from the USA, China and Korea. If that level of success calls to mind a design studio near Malibu beach, Humvee in the driveway and hanging out with the stars, you couldn't be more wrong. Trevor Wilkinson lives and works in the wild North West. The North West of England. And how he got from here to there and back again is one of the more fascinating stories in the MI industry. The Trevor Wilkinson brand first came to UK notice when his innovative roller nut started appearing on the more adventurous US guitars back in the 1980s. How had that come about? 'It all started when I was in Australia, where I'd emigrated. By about 1981, I'd started a couple of crash repair shops, but I'd had enough of cars and wanted to do guitars full-time. I started to build, repair and design custom instruments in Brisbane, and it was just at the time the locking trem had appeared.

Floyd Rose was starting to hit and people were coming along with systems they'd imported from the USA, asking me to fit them to their Strats'. Fitting Floyd Rose systems gave his designer's mind an insight into both what Rose's aims were and other ways of achieving the same results. Trained as a graphic designer, but fascinated with guitars all his life, and with a strong engineering ability, Trevor Wilkinson could hardly have been better suited to the task he set himself. 'I could see why Floyd had clamped the strings at the nut but there had to be a better way. So I came up with the roller nut. I made prototypes, applied for the patent but couldn't do any good at all with it in Australia. Everybody kept saying, you need to go to America. So, I think it was in September '84, I bundled my myself, my wife and our four year old daughter plus three suitcases onto an aeroplane and flew to America. Looking back, it was absolutely insane - I couldn't do it today. I didn't know a single person in America. I think it was just blind belief in what I was doing.' Fortune, they say, favours the bold and it certainly did Trevor Wilkinson.

On the second night in the country a chance meeting led to an introduction to Wayne Charvel. 'I didn't realise at the time that Wayne had sold out to Grover Jackson several years earlier and was working out of his garage in Redlands, but either way, I drove out the following week and immediately we hit it off. He liked the roller nut design, I ended-up moving out to Redlands and it went from there. I began contacting machine shops who could build the product, designed the packaging and started getting the product into production.' Though he talks of these days in a matter of fact sort of way, it must have been anything but easy. Financially on his own in a foreign country, trying to underwrite a completely new idea, which he intended to launch solo, seems less optimistic than foolhardy - but somehow he succeeded. 'We found a guy who could make it, did some prototypes and then one day, one of the Ibanez reps came into the little repair shop that Wayne I had started. Ibanez at that time were represented on the East Coast by Hoshino, but by Chesbro Music on the West Coast.

The rep saw the product, thought Ibanez might be interested and their sales manager of the time, Doug Goates, got involved. I made an agreement that he couldn't take it to Japan unless he took the distribution of it and off we went. It ended-up with me selling 6,000 pieces to Ibanez, which was a pretty good start - and just at the time when I was literally about to run out of money.' So that meant Ibanez guitars appearing with Wilkinson roller nuts? 'No, because Ibanez had set their stall out in the Floyd Rose market and while they thought the product was good, they didn't think it fitted with what they were doing, so they never actually used it on their instruments.' 'I could see that was where we needed to be - with the product fitted as original equipment on a guitar. I was finding when I went to the stores was that they'd buy a product, but they wouldn't fit it on a guitar, it would sit in its little box in a display cabinet and then a guy would walk in ask what it was and how it worked. The sales guy would shrug and say ,"I don't really know".

If a guy couldn't play it and it couldn't be demonstrated, it was going to be a real hard sell. 'By that point I was getting pretty frustrated. So I just picked up the phone one day and called Fender. They were putting the Strat Plus together and there were only two guys working on the project, Dan Smith and George Blanda. Dan asked me to come out to Brea and he said it was fantastic, just what he was looking for, as they didn't want to go the Floyd Rose route. They'd got Sperzel on board, they'd got Lace on board and the next problem to solve was the nut - nobody had been able to do that. But Dan said they wanted it as an exclusive. 'I couldn't give them my product exclusively, but I designed them a specific Fender Wilkinson roller nut. We shook hands and that was it. It was signed and sealed.

They never bought less than 1,500 pieces a month.' With the boost to his company's presence brought about by the Fender deal, Mr Wilkinson was going from strength to strength, working his designer's mind through all the elements of the guitar's inherently unstable tuning system, devising innovative and effective alternatives, almost all of which were successful, not just in the USA but around the world. By now, the Wilkinson brand was 90 per cent OEM. Ask him which makers, and he says: 'Everybody. Really - everybody. We always believed in our product and Fender helped us prove our product was right. Once the big guys like Fender had picked up the roller nut, then other companies would come and ask what we had. I sold quite a lot of the standard Wilkinson roller nuts to people like Washburn and Jackson, but I had a product range by then with vibrato bridges and bass bridges, so I was selling those, too.

'It really got to a point where major guitar companies would sit down in a marketing meeting and three points would come up: "We need Sperzel, we need Seymour Duncan and we need Wilkinson" And really they'd design the guitars around those three products.' At which point, Trevor Wilkinson's world should have been a pretty close approximation of heaven. His products were on guitars around the world, his company was turning over around $1.5 million, with every prospect of more on the way. And then Gibson decided to sue him. 'They came after me, accusing me of infringing a patent. We didn't infringe any patent, because we'd already mentioned their patent in our application and we'd already had the American patent numbers. But like anything with litigation, if somebody wants to come after you and they have a lot of money, they can make life very hard for you. I did what I thought was right. I fought it because I was in the right, but after about $150,000 you think: "Hang on - am I going to lose the company for what is actually probably five to ten per cent of my business?

So Gibson and I came to a settlement that I wouldn't produce the convertible in America and they would go away and leave me alone. Which was the prudent way of doing it.' And then a strange thing happened. 'I came back to the UK to renew my business visa for a further five years and was told at the US embassy that if I wanted a business visa I would have to drop my green card application - which I didn't want to do if I was growing to grow a business there. So I decided to move back to the UK and wait for the green card.' Against the odds, Trevor Wilkinson's application for a green card, which he was six years into the process of attaining, was turned down. Why? The US Immigration Dept doesn't have to explain why, so the reader is left to infer what he or she will. The consequence for the USA was the loss of a very viable business, employing 26 Americans in much-needed manufacturing, of which nearly 70 per cent was exported. Running the operation from the UK proved impossible, so Mr Wilkinson simply shrugged and closed it down. Had someone been pulling strings behind the scenes? If he suspects as much, Trevor Wilkinson doesn't say.

'That got me back to the UK with my family, in 1996/97. I tried to continue to run Wilkinson USA from here, but it couldn't work. I was banging my head against a brick wall. I had Gotoh in Japan, asking me if they could license the product, I had Cortech in Korea, asking if they could license products, so in the end that's what I did. That was the best way of keeping the Wilkinson name out there, and if the truth be told, Gotoh probably build better quality than I'd been building, so at that point it turned into a licensing business. 'Looking back, it was the right move. Leaving aside the obvious advantages, it freed-me up to work as a consultant for other guitar companies. 'At that point, Korean manufacturers were still the ones you would go to if you wanted to buy a good quality lower priced instrument.

Certain factories in Korea were, by then, virtually at the quality of Japanese manufacturers, but not at Japanese prices, and that was when I got the first big design commission, to do the first range of Italia guitars, for a small Korean manufacturing company, which had realised that the OEM business was going to drift to China, so what they really needed were guitar brands of their own that they could control. You've seen this with Cortech doing Cort guitars, Crafter and others.' Trevor Wilkinson's association with Italia is just one of many - including products he distributes himself, like the fine-looking Fret King range. Space constraints being what they are, Italia and Fret King are subjects to which we will probably return at a later date. Indeed, it needs to be said that few interviews we have done during the past couple of years have caused so many agonising decisions about what to leave out. Some day, there should be a book about Trevor Wilkinson. Meanwhile, of the brands with which he is associated, one of the most conspicuous is JHS's Vintage range. How had that come about?

'I used to come over regularly from the States to trade shows and I'd always wander past the JHS stand and when I did, Dennis Drumm would show me a guitar and I'd make a comment like, "great guitar Dennis, but the knobs aren't right". He'd ask what knobs should it have then? And, sure enough, at the next show, he'd have changed them. Dennis is a really smart guy and he listens. What happened with Vintage was that he'd taken it as far down the road as he possibly could. We've got to a point now where Fender are at every price point in the market. Even if you're at the �169 price point, you've still got a Squier up against you and it takes a lot to win against that.' Surely this is a game that Fender, leveraging its brand, will always win? 'Not necessarily. If you can't beat them on price, you have to beat them on quality or features or both - and Dennis's remit to me with Vintage was to achieve that. To make a better mousetrap.

'At that point I had just set-up a new licensing deal with several Korean manufacturers which slotted-in perfectly to what JHS were looking for: to have a guitar retailing at �179, but with Wilkinson product on it. Now when you consider that a Wilkinson VSV bridge retails for �89, it's a bit difficult to put it on a guitar that retails at �179. So to be able to put good tuners on it, Alnico 5 pickups that sound like an America Strat and also a vibrato that actually works, started us off on the road to "Vintage by Wilkinson", which has been, I think, incredibly successful.' Trevor Wilkinson probably understands more about branding and the international manufacturing and marketing of guitars than anyone else in the UK, so it was time for the perennial guitar question. If you've got Gibson and Fender, why do you need anyone else? And how can you compete with these two, when they seem capable of reaching almost every sector of the market? What is to stop them matching your every effort to build that perfect mousetrap and do it with their killer logo on the headstock? 'I've worked closely with Fender and they have their problems, too.

Take the Vintage V6 guitar. There is no Fender anywhere near that that has a tuner that locks, a good, retrofitable, functioning vibrato. It doesn't have Alnico pickups, it doesn't have 22 frets, it doesn't have the attention to detail and all for the simple reason that of Fender were to produce that guitar at �179, why would you buy an American Standard Strat at �899?' 'All the big brand names have to handicap themselves - even in pickups, like Seymour Duncan and Di Marzio. If you were Seymour Duncan, would you make a pickup as good in Korea as you could in America? We don't have that problem. I can do it with hardware, because my range with Gotoh, which I consider to be my high dollar hardware, is proprietary designed and protected, while the products that I have from Korea are re-works of the classic designs, that work better. That means we can produce at any price point the best working product, a tuner, a pickup or a vibrato - we an produce them better than other people can at that price point.' And so, of course, to the $64,000 question.

Where now are we heading with the Chinese? Will we see Chinese brands, the way we saw the rise of once unknowns like Ibanez, Aria and Yamaha? 'When you think back to the beginnings of the Japanese guitar, they had nobody to teach them how to do it. They had to teach themselves, which they did hugely successfully. But they priced themselves out of the market, at which point the major American distributors, who effectively drive the world market, went to Korea. But what the Koreans had that the Japanese hadn't, was a little bit of help getting started. They had some Japanese input and they had the major American brands actually saying: "Oh no, you build a neck like this." So the Korean learning curve was shorter. The Chinese have been incredibly lucky, because everybody has poured every resource into the, including the Koreans, who had learned from the American distributors. 'Chinese guitars have come up incredibly fast and some are fantastic, but are we going to see labour rates stay the same in China? How can we expect a country to build consumer goods like flat screen TVs and cars, which they can't afford to buy for themselves? That's what happened in Japan and Korea.

There's a lot of people in this industry telling me that this is going to take a long while to happen, but I don't believe it. 'As for brands, to develop a brand takes more than just the product. You've got to be in the market with incredibly expensive promotional tools, which makes it very difficult to do and which is why very few Korean manufacturers have built their own brands.' So what is Trevor Wilkinson's instinct about the way the guitar market is going to develop over the next few years? 'I believe that because so many people have come into the industry buying cheap guitars, that we're about to see a mid-price boom. It's already started in the States and it will happen here. Now isn't the time to be concentrating on �150 guitars, because that is what these players already have and now they will shift up-market. Most of your readers will read this and say "he's full of shit", but time will either prove me right or wrong. Thus far, Trevor Wilkinson has had that irritating habit of being mostly right. Sufficiently so to have become one of the world's leading guitar consultants.

With Wilkinson parts almost ubiquitous as OEM fitments and a thriving range of retro-fitable lines, it's hard to see what could come next. But it will. Expect the long-awaited automatic self-tuning guitar real soon now. Ladies and gentlemen: make space on your display counters. Ends. Trevor Wilkinson, founder of TVR sports car company, dies aged 85 | Daily Mail Online Trevor Wilkinson, founder of TVR sports car company, dies aged 85 comments The founder of performance car company TVR has died, the TVR Car Club website said today. Trevor Wilkinson, 85, originally from Blackpool, passed away at a hospital in his adopted home of Minorca yesterday. Mr Wilkinson left school at 14 and started an engineering apprenticeship at a local garage. In 1946 he bought a wheelwright's business in the town, renaming it Trevcar Motors the following year, for selling and repairing cars and light engineering. The TVR manufacturing factory in Blackpool. Founder Trevor Wilkinson passed away in Minorca In 1947 he built his first car, a special two-seater body on an Alvis Firebird chassis for himself.

He then started TVR Engineering, derived from his name - TreVoR - and was joined by Jack Pickard. It was their intention to build their own design of cars. The first made its appearance in 1949: an alloy two-seater body on a multi-tubular steel chassis. The first "production" TVR was the Mark I, later name Grantura, with a glass-fibre body of a design which remained, in modified form, until the M-type was replaced by the angular wedge design Tasmin in 1980. Mr Wilkinson left the company in April 1962 and went on to set up his own engineering business, with Mr Pickard, specialising in glassfibre. He moved to Minorca late in life to spend time on his yacht. 'He was a quiet, reserved man, much loved by those whom he allowed into his circle of friends. He seemed unaware of the awe in which he was held by all TVR enthusiasts' the statement on the website said.

'He was aware of the serious nature of his final illness but, according to a friend, took it in stoical fashion that was typical of the man' A spokeswoman at the Mateu Orfila Hospital in Minorca confirmed he had died yesterday. TVR roars back into action - Telegraph TVR roars back into action A 2010 TVR Cerbera Picture: Rex A new dawn awaits for renowned British car manufacturer TVR, with the help of no other than the McLaren F1 legend Gordon Murray Enlarge Les Edgar with Gordon Murray Wheeler knew how to push customers buttons – in this case with lightweight bodies and huge, old-school V8 engines - and the company thrived TVR , the loudest, most lairy name in fast cars is on its way back. The first of four new cars will be launched in 2017 and Telegraph Luxury can report they will be designed in co-operation with Gordon Murray, the man many regard to be the greatest living automotive engineer. South African-born, Surrey-based Murray is most famous for the McLaren F1 , the original hypercar still, 25 years after its extraordinary win at Le Mans, the last “road car” to do so, regarded as the benchmark for fast cars.

Historically, TVR and Murray are from opposite ends of the engineering spectrum. Murray’s attention to detail has always verged on the obsessive. The F1 apart, he engineered Grand Prix championship winning cars for McLaren and Brabham. Always fast, often beautiful but rarely reliable, TVRs meanwhile were never among the most sophisticated, but their visceral driving experience won them a loyal following among those with chops large enough to handle their take-no-prisoners approach to dynamics. Behind the relaunch of TVR is Surrey-based technology millionaire Les Edgar. Edgar acquired the rights to the name which has been moribund for over a decade now. The new car, Edgar says, will be powered by a new engine - a classic, normally aspirated V8 driving the rear wheels of the car - developed by another legendary British name in racing, Cosworth. It will be built using the low-cost, low-impact production system patented by Murray, iStream. The system, effectively pioneered on the F1, does without the need for investment in expensive tooling and its overriding principles have revolutionised small volume car production.

Its adoption makes the return of TVR more likely to become a reality; the history of the UK specialist car business is littered with broken dreams. There is however as yet no word on where the cars will be built, nor an image of the first car. However the involvement of Murray also boosts the the project’s credibility to an immeasurable degree. In a statement Murray commented; “TVR is an iconic brand which has been an important part of British sports car manufacturing for many decades. Its return to manufacturing is an exciting development and the car deserves the best chassis and powertrain that can possibly be delivered. To that end, I am delighted that our company is involved with the project, and that TVR are using our iStream technology.” However speaking with Telegraph Luxury last year Murray alluded to the fact a desire to follow the F1 with something altogether more accessible has been with him for some time. “More than [another] supercar, the one thing I'm desperate to do - and I'm really trying hard to do it with customers - is use F1-based technology to build an affordable car with beautifully balanced styling and handling. An affordable sports car; a sort of modern Healey Sprite, if you like.

“The days when Britain ruled the waves with Triumph and Austin Healey and MG and stuff: that was just fantastic. Those weren't high performance cars but they were fun cars. Now that we've got all the speed cameras and all the rest of it now, I honestly think if we could build an affordable, stiff, great handling, good looking little sports car that would be a better achievement than doing another supercar. Actually, it’s a thing I want to do most of all.” TVR was originally founded by mechanic Trevor Wilkinson in the late 1940s, building one-offs for racing. Success on the track increased demand for Wilkinson’s engineering and by the mid 1950s Trevcar Motors had been renamed TVR Engineering. The company’s products evolved and gained an increasingly positive reputation, but the company never really made any money and, like so many British car companies, staggered from one financial crisis to another, from owner to owner, until a ballsy Blackpool businessman called Peter Wheeler took control in 1981. Wheeler had made his money in the chemicals business and was arguably no more capable of running the company than any of his predecessors.

Nonetheless he knew how to push customers buttons – in this case with lightweight bodies and huge, old-school V8 engines - and the company thrived under him. He sold in 2004 to the teenage son of a Russian oligarch just as pressure for his cars to finally conform to legislation became overwhelming. TVR never got around to fitting items like anti-lock brakes or airbags, Wheeler opting instead to invest the company in the costly business of building its own engines. Wheeler was autocratic, often claiming that he designed the cars himself with some help from his dog, Ned. Idiosyncratic, with electrical systems and interior controls way more ambitious than TVR engineer resources could ever hope to make properly, the cars were nonetheless spectacular. They are an uncommon sight now, but a Chimaera, Griffith or Cerbera, a Tuscan Typhon or even a rarefied Sagaris swan-song car remain sights to stir the reddest of blood. Whether that stirring will be felt once more is a question of time. TVR TVR Car Club The Turbo – the Lilley’s greatest legacy?

Peter Wheeler 1981 The Wheeler era ran for over 20 years and perhaps saw some of the most innovative development thus far. From the 2.8 litre Tasmin in both fixed head and convertible guise came an entry level 200 using the Ford Pinto 2.0 litre engine. But this didn’t spark the imagination and despite it’s astonishingly low sub-£10K price tag, only 61 examples were sold in three years. The company had also looked to the other extreme and in 1981 had produced two turbo-charged Tasmins, one convertible and one fixed head. The fixed head in particular had a unique body style but given a desire to move into the emerging markets in the Middle East where Ford’s American connection would, it was felt, affect sales, Peter Wheeler took the decision to squeeze the fuel injected V8 from the Rover SDI Vitesse into the Tasmin chassis to produce the Tasmin 350i.

This was an instant hit and spawned the later wilder versions of up to 4.5 litres and although there is one 6.6 litre SEAC, produced originally for the Swedish market, its engine is a one off based upon a Chevrolet V8. The problem with the Tasmin, or “wedge” as it was affectionately known, especially after the Tasmin name was dropped in 1983, was that you either love the shape or you hate it. Attempts to broaden the market with the introduction of a +2 variant did little to really boost sales with just 47 280+2s and six 350+2s being built. The order book was certainly healthy throughout the mid 1980s, but TVR knew that they were missing a huge chunk of the market who harked back to the more round styling of previous TVRs. So at the 1986 Motor Show, Peter offered his customers the new S Series. With looks blatantly stolen from the Lilley’s 3000S, surprisingly the only shared components are door handles.

It used the same Ford 2.8 Cologne seen in the Tasmin/280i although this quickly became the 2.9 litre unit in the S2 and S3. TVR S2 The S sold rapidly and triggered the development of an ES, with a 3.8 litre Holden engine but this did not get beyond the Motor Show prototype. What did was the other project that fello out the S which was the resurrected Tuscan name and which quickly developed from a proposed S Series based road car to the UK’s most exciting one make race series which dominated British motor sport throughout the 90s. There is much more on the history of the Tuscan race series in the Members’ Area. At the 1989 Motor Show, Peter showed the world the replacement for the wedge, the Speed Eight, which was basically a grown up 400SE with a more curvaceous body but it still had the same basic looks. Again, wedge lovers loved it, the rest didn’t. The following year, the Speed Eight had grown into a proper 2+2 convertible but was shown alongside another prototype project, a funny round looking thing bringing back the name of Griffith.

The advanced order book told Peter Wheeler which to proceed with as 32 advanced orders were placed for the Speed Eight but more than ten times that number for the Griff. With the first customer cars being delivered in early 1992, the Griffith ran for less than a year before being joined by the Chimaera, virtually identical but with slightly softer suspension, a larger boot capable of carrying a set of golf clubs and a different body style and which quickly became TVRs best seller. The Griffith then bowed out to make way for the Griffith 500, basically “more of the same” with a 340bhp, 5.0 litre version of the engine. Chimaera 4.0 TVR continued to go from strength to strength and it looked as though Peter Wheeler could do no wrong. With a bulging order book (the green Chimaera above was ordered at the Motor Show in October 1993 but not delivered until June 1994), TVRs were the sports car to be seen in throughout the middle of the 1990s. But he had more work to do yet.

Peter was keen to attract back those customers who sold their Griffith or Chimaera with the onset of a family and thus announced the Cerbera in 1993. But this car was to undergo radical development including a new engine for the original Show Car had a Rover V8 engine. The production version would have TVRs own, the 4.2 litre AJP. This engine, stretched out to a V12, was the powerplant behind possibly the wildest TVR ever, the Speed 12, which though originally designed fom the outset as a race car, spawned a road going version of which one still exists and was tested by Evo recently who gave it “11½ out of 5”. Furthermore, one bank of the Speed 12 effectively became the Speed Six engine which is now at the heart of every TVR. In an attempt to search out new export markets, in 1998 TVR opened a new factory in Port Kelang, just outside Kuala Lumpar Malaysia. This factory produced only Chimaeras and whilst there was a burgeoning home market for them in Malaysia, most of their production went overseas to Australia, Japan and |south Africa.

Interestingly, some were even alleged to have been shipped back to UK to meet the growing demand in the European market. The original road going Speed 12 And in race trim at Thruxton The Griffith replacement emerged with TVR’s third use of the name Tuscan in 1999 with the first customer cars arriving the following year and then in 2001 the Tamora, to replace the Chimaera. These were joined in 2003 with the T350C and T, a fixed head car that has been described as a spiritual successor to the Vixen and Tuscan of the 1960s. All of these cars used the 3.6 litre version of the Speed Six engine. Towards the end of 2003, the T350 had spawned a wilder version with cooling slots, spoilers and the 4.0 litre engine from the Tuscan S and was known as the Sagaris. It was planned that the Sagaris would run alongside and eventually take over from the Tuscan racer in the TVR Tuscan Challenge.

The following year subtle changes were announced to the Tuscan which would become the Tuscan 2 and an all new version would be produced, the Tuscan 2 convertible. Tuscan 2 Convertible Almost running in parallel to the development of the road cars was the competition department which having cut its teeth on the Tuscan racer and then the Speed 12 through the 90s, looked towards Le Mans. First off was the Tuscan R which appeared at the 2000 Motor Show and although it was shown as a road car that you could take racing, it quickly became an out and out race car and was first seen on the track in 2001 before being renamed the T400R (and occasionally T440R). Development continued the following year until in June 2003, two De Walt liveried T400Rs rolled across the start line for the first time that TVR had been there for 41 years.

Sadly, as the history books show, neither car finished but they were back 12 months later in the hands of Synergy Chamberlain Motorsport and this time, to the purple wearing crowd’s delight, both cars crossed the finishing line after 24 hours. Nikolai Smolenski Shortly after this, the TVR world heard a surprise announcement. The company had been sold. The new owner was a young Russian entrepreneur called Nikolai Smolenski and he set about building upon the sterling work that his predecessor had achieved in the past 22 years. With major inroads being made into product development and quality control, the new cars that emerged from Bristol Avenue over the next two years were the best engineered TVRs ever and with a secure financial grounding, the future looked rosy for the company with announcements of a brand new new purpose-built production facility to be constructed at South Shore near to Blackpool airport, together with a move of the company headquarters to a new facility in Lancaster to include a TVR museum.

in July 2006, the announcement was made that that the world renowned engineering company Ricardo had been brought onboard to develop the Speed Six engine to meet Euro 5 (LEVII) compliance which would enable Nikolai to realise his plans to kake TVR a world beater rather than just simply focussing principally on the UK market. However, for a variety of reasons, sales fell off during 2006 and with it so did the plans for TVR's future. The company was initially split into a smaller number of companies including TVR Engineering, TVR Cars Distribution Ltd and Blackpool Automotive, the latter comprising the manufacturing division at Bristol Avenue. The announcement was made on 18 October 2006 that although the company headquarters would remain in Britain, assembly would be outsourced overseas. Over the next few months, speculation was rife amongst enthusiasts as to where this outsourcing would leave the manufacturing division, ranging from Eastern Europe to South Africa with most people believing that it would be Bertone in Italy. However, to date that has been nothing but Proposed TVR Typhoon pure conjecture and no confirmation has been made.

During all of this however they also announced that an all new 600bhp supercar, the Typhoon, would be launched at the 2007 Geneva motorshow as reported exclusively by TVR MD David Oxley in the October 2006 issue of TVR Sprint. The really bitter blow to TVR enthusiasts came on Friday 22 December 2006 when it was announced that Blackpool Automotive had gone into receivership. There was also speculation at the time that the moulds for Sagaris and Tuscan II had been shipped overseas whlst the intelectual property rights and trademarks had been transferred to one of the other arms of the company. However, PKF Ltd, the company appointed to act as receivers, dispelled these rumousr when on 2 February 2007, they placed Blackpool Automotive for sale, including the TVR trademark, in a sealed bid auction. Nikolai then bought back the company - and most importantly the intellectual propertiy rights to the name TVR - for a fraction of what he originally paid for it in 2004.

Rumours then continued throughout 2007 and early 2008 of will he won't he start rebuilding cars. But the exciting news that we had all been waiting for was when these rumours started to come to fruition. Firstly there were these photos of a barn "just outside Blackpool" published on the discussion forums on this website: Trevor Wilkinson, RIP. 1923-2008 Founder of TVR Trevor Wilkinson, the quiet, unassuming man who first built the car that now carries the three main letters from his name, passed away peacefully in a Menorcan hospital on 6 June 2008. Click here to download the original TVRCC press release covering this sad news. The Times version is here ; the Telegraph version is here . Alternatively, click here to download the BBC Radio 4 tribute that appeared on The Final Word. Then in June 2008, the Club were approached by David Oxley of TVR and invited to attend an exclusive preview of the new Sagaris 2. The Club was extremely fortunate to have been invited to this as the only other attendees were Dealer Principals; no other members of the press or representatives from other websites were present.

From an overwhelming number of applicants who wanted to attend this event, some 60 Club members' names were drawn out of a hat and these then met on 10 July 2008 at the new TVR development facility in Wesham near to Blackpool from where they drove in convoy to the Great Hall at Mains where they had the opportunity at first hand to view the new car. You can download the Club report on this exclusive event which was uploaded to this site live from the preview by clicking here . From this – Trevor’s own sketch of TVR 1 To this - Sagaris 2 July 2008 Unfortunately nothing more came from this relaunch and from then until 2012 various rumours were promulgated on various internet website and in the media but all came to naught. The final nail in TVR's coffin appeared to come in July 2012 when Nikolai's holding company announced that the future of the TVR brand lay in offshore windfarm technology. TVR RIP. But like the phoenix from the ashes, TVR was to rise again.

On 6 June 2013, five years to the day since we lost Trevor, it was announced that the whole of TVR had been sold to a British company; eventually the owner of this company was also revealed, IT entrepreneur and sports car enthusiast, Mr Les Edgar. Les who made his money initially as a compueter game designer, quckly found himself as the European Vice President of EA Games before turning his attention to Aston Martin and proceeded to build and develop the team that in just three years, took a class win in GT1 at Le Mans with the DBR9. The ideal man to take TVR forward? We think so. Following the announcement at the November NEC Classic Motor Show that TVR was launching the heritage parts service to keep the existing cars on the road, initially from Griffith onwards but very soon extended to all TVRs, it was with great excitement that news of the new TVR was released to the public, through the TVRCC, on 3 June 2015. For full details, click here . The knockers will still say that TVRs are unreliable. But we that own them, drive them and love them know better. And we are confident that TVR is in good hands...

• TVR Cars started taking deposits on its recently announced new sports car, effective from July 7th 2015. • Decision taken as a direct reaction to the incredible public response generated by the recent announcement of the new car. • Priority scheme and reduced deposit offered to established TVR Car Club members in celebration of its 50 year anniversary. The discounted deposit offer for TVRCC members ended on July 31st 2015 1st July 2015: Hot on the heels of the news that TVR is to launch an all-new car in 2017, the company has decided that it will start taking deposits for the car from July 7th, 2015. The decision, which has come sooner than originally anticipated, has been made as a direct result of the huge, positive, public reaction generated by announcement that the company will launch the incredible new car. Designed in conjunction with Gordon Murray Design and featuring a Cosworth V8 engine, sports car enthusiasts the world over are lining up to buy what promises to be one of the most exciting new sports cars of the decade.

John Chasey, Operations Director of TVR, says: “We’ve been totally blown away by the reaction to the new car. Our phone lines and online enquiry system went into meltdown when the news was announced, and we decided that we must begin to bring a structure to the enquiries and build a delivery pipeline well in advance of production. Volumes in year one will be limited as we ramp up production, so this allows us to reward those individuals prepared to make a financial commitment at this early stage.” TVR will take a £5,000 deposit from all interested parties, with detailed specifications to be established at a later stage. However, the company has also announced that it will offer a limited quantity of reduced deposits to TVR Car Club members during July as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Car Club and as a thank you to the established individuals who have demonstrated continued enthusiasm and loyalty to the brand. Anyone who has been a member of the club for more than 6 months will be offered the opportunity to pay a £2,500 deposit, and TVR will also make a financial donation to the TVR Car Club for each deposit taken from a member.

Les Edgar, Chairman of TVR, says: “We feel it is important to reward those people who have been such enthusiastic ambassadors for the TVR brand. The club is a wonderfully active and loyal community of people who simply love the cars, so it seems fitting that they should be offered a reduced deposit and a promise of some of the early production units. With initial production in 2017 to be in the low hundreds, the early units are likely to be much coveted.” The company is currently working on building and establishing its UK network of TVR Heritage and TVR Performance partners, many of which will have previously been TVR main dealers, whilst suitable new partners are also being sought. Most of the early cars will be delivered direct from the factory, although a referral scheme will be put in place to reward the network partners for their loyalty to the brand and to assist them in establishing relationships with the new customers in their locality. For the latest details please visit 1966 Griffith TVR 400 Values | Hagerty Valuation Tool® Images are general in nature and may not reflect the specific vehicle selected.

History of the 1965-1979 TVR TVR was a company with an interesting and at times turbulent history. The name comes from the consonants in the first name of the founder, Trevor Wilkinson. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the Blackpool company busied itself primarily with constructing lightweight race specials with tube chassis and fiberglass bodies. Motivation was usually through MG and Ford Kent cross-flow four cylinder engines. With the sale of the company to Martin Lilley in 1965, TVR enjoyed its greatest period of prosperity and stability concentrating on the Vixen model (powered by a variety of engines from Ford Kent, MG, and Triumph fours, to a Triumph six) while independent importer Jack Griffith executed the Ford V-8 powered Griffith 200 and 400. These became known as the Tuscan when Griffith’s company evaporated. The 2500M was by far the most successful model of the Lilley era with most going to the U.S. via importer Gerry Sagerman.

The 2500M followed the basic TVR formula of a fiberglass body over a tube frame with various large manufacturer parts bin items making up most of the front suspension while the rear wishbone, independent suspension was a TVR design. Power was from the 2.5-liter straight six that ordinarily lived under the hood of the Triumph TR6. Since the 2500M was a bit lighter than the Triumph, performance was slightly better. TVR was always at the mercy of other manufacturers for its engines and when the TR6 ended production in 1976, the writing was on the wall. TVR exhausted its supply of TR6 engines in 1977, necessitating a switch to a 3.0-liter Ford Essex V-6, an altogether better powerplant. Around the same time, the car got the opening glass hatchback that it always should have had, and it became known as the Taimar. TVRs appeal to those enthusiasts with a taste for something different and the patience to locate sources of the cars’ bits. Fiberglass bodies obviously don’t rust, but the tube frames do. It’s the only real headache in TVR ownership.

1966 Griffith TVR 400 Info Body Styles

Question: What make of car is associated with Trevor Wilkinson?
Answer: TVR