We reported last week that the British sports car brand TVR was reportedly on the mend, having found new ownership.
We’ve now learned that British-born Les Edgar – a man made rich on computer games – has purchased everything involved with TVR and aims to mount a comeback.
Edgar fielded a call from PistonHeads.com and answered some candid questions about his automotive past and what he envisions for the future of TVR. Intriguingly, Edgar seems uninterested in rebooting the TVR we’d come to know over the last two decades. Instead, he wants to start fresh.
Of all the answers Edgar gave, one stood out to us most. When asked what he saw as the heart of TVR, he said, “I think it’s the people that buy them.” This was amusing to us because the kind of men who bought TVRs were those with a wild streak – a man who didn’t car if his 500 horsepower sports car didn’t have any safety equipment of any kind.
When asked if he’d ever owned a TVR, Edgar simply said, “yes,” but wouldn’t elaborate for fear people would extrapolate from that answer the kind of TVR he would then build. “It sounds minor, but what we don’t want to do is to carry on the bullsh*t [sic] that for years and years has been surrounding the marque, we want to stop that now. Our target was to bring TVR home and then to finalize a plan that will reintroduce the brand in a meaningful way.”
We often deride those who choose to reboot a failed car company. With TVR, however, we kind of get it. If given the opportunity to reincarnate a great American brand, we’d jump at the chance. Sure, we’d pass on Detroit Electric but offer us REO or Nash and you might have us listening.
Any new TVRs – if they ever come – are several years away. From what we understand, Edgar and his team are now sitting on a jumbled pile of old car bits and monikers and need to sort through and see what they want to toss in the bin and what they want to keep.
If Edgar’s smart, he’ll buy the powertrain bits from a known entity like Jaguar, let the boys at Lotus design him a chassis, and let some British design wiz pen the bodylines.
