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 an...