Mr tvr wants to go racing!

Mr Smolenski was recently quoted wanting a multi-marque British race series with fixed budgets to keep things competitive. Suggested opposition were Noble, Morgan and even Lotus though strangely Marcos was not mentioned. Not only a race series, but also an all-new V12 engine to power a planned Speed 12 derivative.

Speaking to EVO magazine, Mr tvr ruled out a tvr works team and series in the short term, stating that he favoured “supporting privateer teams in endurance racing”. Well the only current tvr endurance teams we are aware of are Topcats Racing with their Sagaris GT and Peninsula-tvr with their Tuscan Racer. Tim Hood has contested the odd round in Britcars with his now infamous black Sagaris V8, but where the car will be running next year is uncertain and Lawrence Tomlinson has currently moth-balled his tvrs so which teams he is considering is not clear. I would guess that LNT is the logical choice. The biggest of the privateers, and certainly the fastest, they invested heavily in their Speed 6 engines and coupled to chassis development in some very experienced hands the results were there to see in the times. However they now campaign Panos cars and I would suspect that the reasons for the shift were heavily influenced by development costs and lack of factory support!

With other issues like quality control, emission controls for overseas markets and powerboats and motorbikes all mentioned in the same article, its difficult to see how this is to come about in the short to medium term. Lets not forget that this is the same guy who canned the tvr Motorsport department within weeks of taking over. At least it shows that he now realises that Motorsport is a key marketing tool for a high-performance sports marque like tvr.

Still, with the new Factory planned, potential new markets opening and new developments tabled such as sequential ‘boxes, ABS and traction control, now could be the start of something really special. New premises, improved quality control and the recently much improved handling of the current line up (even Jeremy Clarkson could drive the Sagaris!) are all promising signs. We can only keep our fingers crossed and wait, but in the meantime how many buyers will wait?

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