Vintage Thing No.59 - TVR SM or Zante

Back in 1984, I visited the TVR factory in Blackpool with my year of the Industrial Design/Transport course at Coventry (Lanchester) Polytechnic. TVR were undergoing something of a renaissance at the time and had just begun their long and beautiful relationship with the Rover V8.

Having an official poke around the factory was fascinating but what was even better was a slightly less official poke around the yard at the back. How often do car mad design students, barely out of their adolescence, get to run around the scrap piles of prestigious manufacturers?

Among the old moulds and rejected mouldings for TVR Tasmins and M series was this TVR SM, subsequently renamed the TVR Zante. And among my vast collection of old photos I recently found these photographs of it.

TVR had always been an inspirational marque and I think Peter Filby got it right with the title of his TVR : Success against the odds book. As a small scale specialist manufacturer, TVR always punched well above its weight and although the atmosphere in the factory was probably just as grim as any other place of work, to us over-excited gearheads it was a place of pilgrimage. Who knew what heights the company would ascend next? It was a happening site and, looking back, this was the very time that the company was building the foundations for the greatness that turned it into the yuppie "Me! Now!" icon of the big car economy nineties.

Under Peter Wheeler, TVR gained a reputation for championing young designers. I think we sensed this and some of us worked for the firm for our industrial placements.

The SM was a prototype that marked TVR's change of aspirations. Until 1973, when the introduction of VAT killed off many component cars, TVR was foremost a kit car manufacturer but at the 1971 Earls Court Motor Show the firm showed a mock up of the SM, signaling a move up market.

The bodywork was developed in conjunction with Specialised Mouldings Ltd, who were still a force to be reckoned with in the field of prototype and concept car building at the time of our visit to the factory. The severe kick up at the rear was of its time and shows a connection with the Ogle Aston Martin known as the Sotheby Special. With its Morris Marina door handles, it could be mistaken for a mid-seventies Lotus and contemporary photographs show it on Wolfrace wheels - remember them?. The car we saw had standard TVR alloys that suit it equally as well.

It was ahead of its time in a number of ways, not just the styling. Under Martin Lilley the company were uncertain about putting the SM into quantity production and on introduction at the Earls Court show it was little more than a mock up. It wasn't until the following year that a running prototype - presumably the car we saw - had been fitted with a Triumph 2.5 litre engine. TVR designed a new chassis featuring all round independent suspension and Martin Lilley used this car as personal transport for a while.

And that was as far as it got.

What happened instead was that the M for Martin series, which was a much less radical departure in style, got a simpler (and presumably cheaper) chassis that had been developed for the SM. The M series bodywork was a sleeker reinterpretation of the stumpy Vixens and Tuscans that had established TVR's reputation in the sixties. The M series also had a more practical hatchback than the SM.

But M series cars never looked so sleek as the TVR SM. The extreme kick up at the rear may not be to everyone's taste but it's certainly distinctive.

As ever, I'd really like to know who designed it. Anyone out there know?

Towards the end of its short life as a prototype the SM became known as the Zante. This may have been because Citroen had launched their SM and Zante, being a Greek island where presumably TVR's new clientele would holiday, sounded sufficiently exotic.

Maybe personnel at TVR still remembered the Trident debacle, where an earlier attempt to move upmarket resulted in the loss of the design and the creation of an independent and potential rival motor manufacturer.

When we saw it, it looked like it could be bailed up for scrap along with the rejected panels lying around it. Here are two of my buddies, Mike Evason and Pete Cansfield, posing by the car.

All glass was missing apart from the near vertical window in the tail gate, there was no interior and its rear light lenses were smashed. When we saw it, it was just an abortive design study that had come to nothing a decade earlier but it had somehow survived - against the odds. Its visual impact was along the lines of "What the hell is that?" and I'm fairly sure we uttered this - or more industrial strength epithets - when we industrial strength designers copped it. It screamed attention but - dare I say it - was too sleek for a TVR, which should be brutal above all else. Time has mellowed its lines and - as one of our lecturers would put it - "I find myself liking it."

I've no idea where this car is now or even if it has survived. The wind tunnel model tuned up at a TVR car club auction in the states a few years ago (photo by TVRCC) and I would imagine that the odds are that the TVR Zante is still among us somewhere. The factory must have realised its historical significance because they hadn't bailed it up. They just hadn't got around to looking after it very well.

The M series is nowadays credited with ensuring TVR's survival (against the odds again) during the turbulent seventies so it seems that the SM was not needed after all.