The TVR Griffith 500 Sports Car

5–Litres of British Grunt

I have been thinking again, why is it that women cannot put on mascara with their mouths closed? Why, if it’s meant to be Alcoholics Anonymous, is the first thing that any attendee is required to do is stand up and say, “My name is Bob and I’m an alcoholic?”

Another question, why is it I have never known anyone who owns a SAAB? I found this quite odd, and when I started asking my friends, they couldn’t think of anyone in their social circle that had one either. This had me wondering, as the company is still in business, and as you see them on the roads, who does actually buy them? Perhaps it is a demographic I am unaware of, but that said, I have not known anyone who owned a TVR either, that i suntil last year.

Well now, my neighbour has gone and spoilt it all with the recent acquisition of a SAAB 93 estate. With the arrival of this car, little did I expect that my other statement was going to go belly up, as I was seriously considering buying a SAAB myself with my sensible head, whilst my silly head was tellingme to buy a TVR.

First Encounter with a TVR Came When Working with Ride Drive

I have been involved with a few TVR owners, this being through Ride Drive of course, but actual ownership, well no of course not. For a start they are expensive, and according to Clarkson, they are unreliable. After all, he is the expert, and if anyone should know, Jeremy should.

Jeremy Clarkson always comes out with the usual ‘always breaking down’ comment at every opportunity when speaking of TVR’'s. He never utters this view whilst driving one on test though, and he was certainly raving about the Sagaris on the episode of Top Gear I saw on the Dave TV channel the other week. No tonce did he mention any reliability issues. Anyway, I digress.

It was whilst meeting up with some of these folk at a TVR Car Club meeeting I realised none of them were smoking pipes, nor were they banging on about reliability or cost of ownership. No, in fact they were just talking about driving the cars.

I did try to catch them out with a few pointed questions, but try as I might, I could not shift them. Perhaps I was onto something here, as it may be that TVR’s are more reliable than has been suggested elsewhere.

Are they expensive to service? After some research I found that it would cost less than my Volswagen. With the factory closed, can you get parts? All of the official dealerships are now independents and there are plenty of various experts out there.

Many of the TVR parts Come From Major Manufacturers

As many TVR parts come from major manufacturers there is not a shortage. A company called Multipart are now on board making spares galore and apparently the replacement parts are actually better now than when TVR was still trading.

With my mind turning over, much stroking of chin and dreaming, my perceived problem was of how do I sell the idea of TVR ownership to my Significant Other? Well as it happens I didn’t have to try that hard. Good girl, back of the net!

Now all I had to do was find the one I wanted and to make sure it was a good one. With plenty of advice freely given by the TVR owners I had met, the search commenced. It wasn’t that long before my search came to an end and a purchase was made.

A British Sports Car With an American Engine

During my last two literary pieces for the Ride Drive website I had been rumbling around the Cotswolds in a Jensen Interceptor, and then an Alfa Romeo Spider. An American V8 engine powers the Jensen, and the Alfa is a sports convertible, therefore by writing about my TVR, this ties these two elements together in the one vehicle.

TVR Griffith 500, is a sports convertible powered by an American born V8 engine. To understand why TVR produced this car we have to go back some years and cross the pond to explain the big engine sports car concept.

In the late 1950’s American engine designers had turned to Aluminium for their engine castings, as this provided greater efficiency as well as the obvious weight advantages. Buick was one such company taking this route and one of the engines they had been producing was a 3.5 litre V8, named as The Fireball.

A little later, here in the UK, Rover was looking at replacing their heavy straight six unit, as used for powering their executive cars of the 1960’s. By chance, Rover’s William Martin–Hurst, came upon an example of The Fireball in an American boatyard.

At the time, Buick, now General Motors, was phasing out The Fireball and therefore had no further use for it. It followed that in 1965, Martin–Hurst managed to buy the rights and the tooling from General Motors so as to produce the engine in the UK.

The Rover V8 is One of the Most Successful Engines of all Time

Successfully fitted and used in the Rover saloon cars of the day, this engine was seen as an ideal power unit for a brand new addition to the Land Rover stable, the Range Rover, in which it turned out to also be a great success. So versatile did it prove to be the engine was used to power cars from MG, Triumph, Morgan, and Marcos, to name but a few, and of course Rover. So how did it end up in a TVR?

Put very simply, a TVR called the Tasmin was originally built using the Ford Essex⁄Cologne V6 unit, as found in the Ford Granada and Ford Capri of the time. However, as TVR in those days actually exported their products, they were finding it difficult to get their cars into Middle Eastern countries, as the Ford engine was perceived there as being American. With Vietnam being a place that was very much in the news and in minds, I guess that would have been just about as welcome as the arrival of Heather Mills at a Wings reunion.

British Leyland Readily Supplied Rover V8 Engines to TVR

When TVR asked British Leyland if they had an engine they could use, they found them most willing to supply their Rover V8 lump. In fact, British Leyland were struggling to use the engine at this point, owing to the poor sales performance of the Rover SD1. The engine was in TVR hands by the early 1980’s, and went on to be used in various TVR models in its ‘breathed on’ 3.5, 4.0, 4.2 and 4.5 litre form, in the S–series, as well as the Tasmin⁄Wedge models.

As time moved on, and as the wedge shape for cars was seen as old hat, a new model was needed to keep TVR up to date. The Griffith prototype was launched on an unsuspecting public at the 1990 British motor show and such was the level of interest, the car just had to be made. Remember, this was a company that had been producing cars with sharp edges up until now, and the new sleek and curvaceous Griffith just blew the public away.

The TVR Griffith was Launched in 1991

The Griffith was officially launched in late 1991 and took its name after Jack Griffith, an American importer of TVR’s of the ‘60’s.  This was a man who put larger engines in TVR Grantura models for the stateside market and then simply called it a Griffith.

The new TVR Griffith was sold with either a 4.0 or 4.3–litre Rover V8 engine form (240⁄280bhp), and in 1992 the car would set you back the thick end of £30k to buy. The initial show car was based on the chassis of the V8 version of the S–series, but the production road car came out with a chassis derived from a TVR Tuscan race car.

The TVR Griffith Caused much Media Excitement

Journalists of the day raved about the new Griffith. ‘So close to greatness it hurts,’ was how Autocar summed it up. Performance Car Magazine needed less print, as the heading consisted of, “Wow” for their write–up. "They’re loud, punk rock uncouth and who gives a damn," was the comment by Jeremy Clarkson, in his Performance Car Magazine article of 1993.

It was in the same year, 1993, the 5–litre version of the TVR Griffith was announced, with the promise of 340bhp and upgraded brakes and suspension. The engines were supplied through Land Rover at Solihull before making the short trip to TVR engine specialists, TVR Power, in Coventry. By the time the 5–litre was launched very little of the original Rover engine remained as standard, and having been properly sorted, travelled to the Bristol Avenue factory in Blackpool for their final fitment.

Most will know the body of the TVR Griffith was made from fibre glass matting being laid in layers within a mould and left to cure. However, some will not realise the work involved in the chassis.

47–yards of Steel Tubing

Using mild steel tubing, some 47–yards of it, this was cut, formed and welded into what is actually a thing of beauty, when you see it in the flesh.

After all that craftsmanship, what do you end up with in terms of specification? Well, for a start you do not get ABS, nor do you get air bags, and you can forget about electronic stability control, because there are none of those either.

When asked about this, then owner of TVR Peter Wheeler, said something along the lines of ‘building cars for men and not for …..’ Well, anyway you get his drift!

One of the Smoothest Car Bodies Possibly Ever Built

There are no door handles or petrol caps standing proud of the surface, no door locks anywhere, a radio aerial that is internally fitted and even the rear number plate does not have obvious lighting units, as it is actually backlit! So what is it like to drive?

Gazing through the windscreen over the long, almost E–Type Jaguar styled bonnet, whilst you are cocooned in leather and Wilton, looking at the classic British sports car dash finished in walnut veneer, you turn the key one notch and hear from behind the whirr of the fuel pump priming the system ready to deliver. Just as soon as the engine fires, it’s a case of, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S UNHOLY!

That is when the world seems to move and loose fillings fall out of your teeth. Beelzebub is sat in the passenger seat, birds fall from trees, cats stand with arched backs and tails like a bottle brush and neighbours jump from windows as you pull out of the garage into the daylight. Yes, you certainly know when the engine has fired up alright!

Leaving it idling, whilst you go back to close the garage door, gives you the chance to admire the rear of the car. With such a clean aspect, the only parts protruding are the twin tail pipes, clearing their passages of the overnight moisture as the car sits there lumping and thumping on choke, waiting for the adventure ahead.

Supercar Performance Figures

The initial claims for the car was 0–60 in 4.1 seconds; standstill to 100 was “just over 10–seconds, Sir,” but I have no reason to query these figures. Having now gone over to the dark side, I wear my ‘Griff grin’ on a regular basis. Quite simply it is an immense car, quite happy to chug through town, but take it into the countryside, and hitting the loud pedal, it flies like no car I have driven before.

The TVR Griffith just seems to go on and on. Get into fourth gear and accelerate and it just goes. You will give up well before the car does. This is a car with a top speed of over 160mph after all, and if you try full–chat in fifth, you will simply run out of road. I have heard reports of wheel spin in top at 120! Now, this is super–car territory, and pity the driver who thinks he can outpace what he may mistake to be the MX5 in his mirrors!

Road holding is pin sharp too, but this is not a car to be handled roughly. You have to work with it, show empathy, or it may decide to bite you. Many worry about staying on the black stuff with these cars, but they needn’t.

Specialist Driver Training Recommended for TVR Ownership

It is not a car for the inexperienced of course, and to get the best from it you are as well to get some expert training, but a well set–up TVR Griffith will provide you with a car that’s up there with the best of them through the bends. Getting out of shape on the road will usuallly involve too much throttle in a bend, or more commmonly, lifting off the right foot can quickly introduce the driver to the hedgerow.

On the open road, and pulling in third, you become aware of a low grumble from somewhere that seems to start ahead of you and as it builds, and moves behind the car, reaching a point where you start looking for the RAF jet that is tailing you – and it’s glorious!

Travel anywhere and you will regularly see people stop and turn, heads follow the V8 thump with a smile not given to lesser cars. It is a shared experience between pedestrian and driver, a moment that lives long in the memory of small boys who simply stand pointing open mouthed. It is a brief moment almost of serendipity when this happens, for there is no other car quite like the TVR in full voice

All other cars are now sanitised, harmonised and politicised. The Griffith owed its success to the Rover engine from America, which is at its heart, but its demise actually came from another country, Germany.

The last 100 TVR Griffith’s were Badged as the S.E.
(Special Edition)

When the purchase of the Rover badge was made by BMW, Peter Wheeler, then owner of TVR, came out with another oft–quoted statement that suggested no car of his would be fitted with a German engine. When the factory had 100 British engines left, they went into the Griffith S.E model; each sequentially numbered, taking the car to the end of production in 2002.

Production figures were something the factory never seemed to concern themselves with, but best guesses land somewhere in the low two thousand for the TVR Griffith. Some cars were exported, time and collisions will have seen the demise of a few more, so feel grateful to see one on the road, but above all, feel blessed if you own one.

Some TVR owners have pet names for their cars. Many are called Trev, with others simply referred to as Tivs. Mine? Yes, it has a moniker, and is known as Nobody. Well, after all as they say, nobody is perfect, and as cars go, this just about is.

First Published April 2008

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The TVR Griffith 500 Sports Car