Unique TVR Trident: at the sharp end

By Alastair Clements

| 2 Dec 2025

Classic & Sports Car – TVR Trident: at the sharp end

Picture a traditional TVR sports car. Brawny, powerful, lairy… and a little bit scary. Squat, purposeful, curvaceous… and gawky.

A Cobra wannabe, but without the Thames Ditton snake’s timeless lines.

Let’s face it, second-generation Griffith aside, Blackpool’s sporadically successful maker of sports cars is not known for producing pretty machinery: who needs looks if you’ve got sufficient grunt?

Which means that the market for its products has always been limited to committed enthusiasts rather than the mainstream.

Stylist Trevor Fiore (née Frost) tried to halt the trend for intimidating TVRs with the razor-sharp Trident, which spawned this unique convertible

This was particularly true in the company’s formative years, when its cars were not so much styled as evolved – from a couple of Rochdale noses joined by a bit of resin and matting – and their chassis were designed more by angle grinder and welding torch than they were by pen and drawing board.

And then came the Trident. ‘The most beautiful car in the world?’ asked the Daily Mail after the Geneva Salon in 1965, as the first Trident coupé dropped into the collective consciousness like a bouncing bomb.

By rights it really should have broken down the dam of conservatism that was holding back buyers.

But, as is so often the case in the rollercoaster ride that is TVR’s history, the creation of the car that could have saved the firm was the very thing that maimed it.

The most beautiful car in the world came about almost by accident.

Although the idea of a more exotic, upmarket TVR had been mooted as early as 1961, the Trident ball didn’t begin to roll until a year later when a young designer called Trevor Frost – working under his Italian mother’s more exotic-sounding maiden name of Fiore – struck up a conversation with Grantura Engineering director Bernard Williams at the London Motor Show.

Fiore was working with Torinese coachbuilder Fissore, and he had seen the ideal opportunity to recycle the abandoned Francesca Spyder he had styled for Lea-Francis back in 1960.

The TVR Trident’s original tan-leather trim has made way for blue

At a second meeting in early 1963 – shortly after one of the marque’s regular financial blips – he used the classic ‘sketch on a napkin’ trick, and the then TVR boss was hooked.

Incoming chairman Arnold Burton gave the Trident the green light in 1964.

A year later Fissore had completed two prototypes, the first – and purest for designer Fiore, who saw Burton’s practical revisions to gain cabin space as clumsy – going on show at Geneva in March.

Following US importer Jack Griffith’s assertion that the Trident must be V8-powered, the standard TVR chassis – used for everything from Griffith to 1800 – was stretched by 4½in to 7ft 6in, and the reliable and powerful 289cu in (4727cc) Ford pushrod unit was squeezed in.

The clamour for the new car surpassed expectations.

Grantura Engineering claimed orders for around 50 cars (worth £150,000) at the show alone and, with production planned for three months’ time, two more prototypes were ordered, the second in response to Jack Griffith’s other stipulation: there must be a convertible.

But Griffith played a big part in the failure of the very car he pushed for. After relations soured with the Hoo Hill factory, he cancelled his Trident order.

The Trevor Fiore-penned TVR Trident used a lengthened S2 Vixen/Tuscan V6 chassis

Then came a dock strike in the USA, leaving a batch of Griffiths – sales of which could have gone some way to recouping the Trident’s reputed £30,000 development costs – stranded on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

Not for the first time, TVR – or Grantura Engineering as it was then – was swamped by its growing financial insecurity.

The Tridents’ future looked uncertain, with one car already shipped off to the USA and two dormant, unfinished, in Turin.

“There are all sorts of stories about the Trident,” says Martin Lilley. Then a 23-year-old, Griffith-owning TVR dealer, Martin stepped into the breach with his father and financial backer Arthur to revive the firm as TVR Engineering.

Both believed the gorgeous Trident project was part of the package, Martin says: “When Grantura Engineering was in liquidation, [Suffolk TVR dealer] Bill Last got involved and had a car made at Fissore on an Austin-Healey chassis.

“It was just like the Trident, but different. We didn’t know anything about it until the car appeared at the Racing Car Show in 1966.

“By then we’d got our own Tridents from Fissore, where they were under the illusion Last was there on behalf of TVR.

“It was all a bit underhand. There was a discussion with Bill about us making the Trident for him. I thought about it for a day, but couldn’t see it working – especially not with him.”

The TVR Trident’s pop-up lights rotate

Who really owned the rights to the Trident design remains in dispute, but Fiore and Fissore could hardly be blamed.

After all, they were never paid properly for their original work by the ailing Grantura Engineering.

Yet one thing is for certain: Last’s Trident trio – the potent V8 Clipper, the V6 Venturer and the straight-six Tycoon that followed it – killed off the TVR version for good.

Says Martin: “It was a confusing time, and there were lots of problems. The Trident was one problem that we didn’t need to have, so we got on with TVR as it was.”

Which makes the fact that Last only managed to build 130 of them over the ensuing decade even more galling.

Worse was to come for Martin, who had to watch the glassfibre bodies for Last’s cars rolling out of the next-door unit, where TVR’s sister firm and body supplier Grantura Plastics resided.

Undaunted, the Lilleys revised and relaunched the TVR 1800S and fetched their two unfinished Tridents from Turin.

The convertible was then completed for Martin to use. “My car was part of the assets of Grantura Engineering,” he explains. “We got a red coupé and my gold convertible.”

The TVR Trident’s Ford engine makes 195bhp

Martin continues: “It was a very light colour, but then Fiore took it back to Italy in 1966 and spent a long time away with it, the cheeky bugger!”

“He repainted it tangerine orange and added a strip with holes drilled in it beneath the back to hide the chassis.

“He then disappeared off to Spain in it – I think he had a friend down in the Benidorm area. Eventually it came back – a bit worn out!”

Martin then used the car for a few years before selling it on. Following a period in the USA, the unique convertible underwent a meticulous restoration with TVR enthusiast Neil Lefley in the late 1990s, during which time it was repainted the rather more flattering shade of metallic ice blue that you see here. And it looks fantastic.

At a casual glance, a TVR Trident and a Bill Last Trident could be one and the same, but it’s in the details where the purer original and its uglified, compromised evolution diverge.

For Last’s car, Fiore had to modify the shape to fit over the longer, chunkier Healey box-section chassis.

That accounts for his car’s taller, slabbier sides and the unappealing bend to the immaculate shoulder line of the original.

Clumsy side vents, chubbier bumpers and incongruous round headlights that took a bite out of the front panel were also unfortunate additions.

Fiore’s cancelled Francesca Spyder donated its lines to the TVR Trident

“The [Bill Last] Trident was quite different,” says Martin. “The detailing wasn’t so good and the inside was rubbish. The original design was beautiful, but the front of this one was really rather boring.”

Martin’s convertible is perhaps not quite as well balanced as its coupé sibling, but it has the same exceptionally crisp finish: the inset, chrome-finned side vents, deep sills, wonderful origami bumpers and immaculate indents that surround the badges and lights.

The later Cibié driving lights do it no favours, because its sharp lines are otherwise uncluttered.

The doorhandles are little more than thumb hooks with barrel locks, while the fuel filler is concealed, Mustang-style, behind the rear numberplate and the headlights are hidden away in rather natty rotating pods.

If you have ever sat in an early TVR – even a long-wheelbase – you’ll be amazed at how much space there is inside the Trident.

Except in the offset footwell, where it comes as a relief to find there are only two pedals following the current Belgian owner’s decision to swap the clunky original Borg-Warner T-10 manual for a period three-speed automatic.

He also added power steering for good measure. A travesty? Not likely: slide on to the broad, comfortable seat – whose finish is clearly more Turin than Blackpool – and this car feels worlds away from its raucous Griffith sibling.

The TVR Trident wears neat quarter-bumpers

The modifications feel so appropriate that it seems inevitable they would have found their way on to the options list, had the Trident reached the market.

Prototype hints remain – wipers that don’t park properly, Dymo labels atop the toggle switches on the wide, vinyl-trimmed centre console – but it’s an impressively complete car.

It’s elegant in the not-quite-finished vein of a Gordon-Keeble rather than a decades-of-history Aston Martin cabin, but elegant nonetheless.

TVR would later become synonymous with drop-tops, but when the Trident appeared the firm had never built one aside from founder Trevor Wilkinson’s first Specials, and its first production roadster, the 3000S, was 13 years away.

So having the wind through his hair would have been a genuine novelty for Martin when he got the car going after retrieving it from Italy.

But, despite the loss of the roof, the Trident doesn’t lack refinement. The relatively tall ’screen works stylistically and provides a sheltered cabin; the hood is easy to use and fits superbly.

Only the lack of sound-deadening and the odd rattle from the huge clamshell bonnet spoil the sense of creak-free solidity.

The TVR Trident’s side vents are beautifully executed

The combination of Martin’s decision to fit a standard 195bhp V8 – rather than the 271bhp ‘Hi-po’ unit Tridents were slated to use – and the prototype’s 2240lb weight (with a steel body and alloy panels it was 390lb heavier than the glassfibre Griffith), plus that auto ’box mean the convertible isn’t going to win any drag races.

But once rolling the Trident is swift – reputedly with 140mph potential – and it’s easy to imagine how outrageous the lighter, more powerful production car would have been.

The brakes – a Tuscan disc/drum set-up here – feel well short of convincing. But customer Tridents were to use Girling discs all round, and glitches such as the tyres rubbing on the wheelarches on full lock and the heat soak into the footwells would have been ironed out in the process.

As for the chassis, with double wishbones all round it was quite up to the task. In fact, it feels both friendlier and more sophisticated than the Griffith, despite being essentially the same.

“It used a longer version of the standard chassis,” explains Martin. “The same one that was used for the S2 Vixen and Tuscan V6, but with different springs and dampers.

“It was smoother-riding, but that was because it was heavy. It was more a relaxing cruiser than an out-and-out sports car.”

The TVR Trident’s sharp wedge shape works best in profile

It would be naïve to suggest that the Oliver Winterbottom-styled Tasmin, launched more than a decade after the Trident’s demise, was Martin completing unfinished business, but it is ironic that by the time the Tasmin reached production the ‘wedge’ style was already looking dated, while the Trident would have been at the forefront of the new wave.

The benefit of distance has damped Martin’s anger, and today he is philosophical about the Trident, saying: “We should have done it, but it’s just one of those things.

“At that stage we didn’t have the money to build it so we stuck with the 1800S. It would have been nice if we could have built it as a TVR; it would have been quite a different ballgame.”

And how. It is impossible to know how TVR’s fortunes would have turned out had the Trident reached production, but it’s certain that it would have matured into a more rounded car maker, one capable of more than the overpowered, under-engineered white-knuckle rides for which it will be remembered.

Just as the Cobra evolved into the sophisticate AC 428, a swift, elegant GT born of a blood-and-guts racer for the road, so its on-track rival the Griffith could – and should – have spawned the Trident.

Like the AC, it will go down in history as one of the car industry’s great missed opportunities.

Images: Tony Baker

Thanks to: David Gerald TVR Sportscars

This was first in our September 2008 magazine; all information was correct at the date of original publication

TVR Tina: Fiore, Fissore and Lilley’s other collaboration

The TVR Tina was a Hillman Imp Sport-based design by Fiore and built by Fissore

Although relatively unsung, Trevor Fiore was a big hitter in the realm of ’60s British low-volume sports cars.

“I first got to know about Frost when I was at Chelsea College [of Art & Design],” says Martin Lilley. “He was doing the Elva [GT160] and I was a mad enthusiast – I had been building cars since I was 16.”

Fiore also designed the Bond Equipe 2-litre, and the Trident wasn’t his only project for TVR.

In 1965, Martin asked Fiore to come up with a Hillman Imp Sport-based baby 2+2.

“I went out to Fissore for a fair bit of time, designing it from scratch,” he says. “Trevor was a good body designer, but he didn’t do chassis design at all.”

It was built by Fissore and named Tina after the daughter of Gerry Marshall, Martin’s friend and colleague – he ran Lilly’s Barnet Motor Co when Martin went to save TVR.

A convertible was unveiled at the 1966 Turin Salon, joined by a pretty coupé (above) for the London Motor Show later in the year.

Strong interest prompted the Hoo Hill works to announce the car would go on sale in early 1968. But even with glassfibre bodies instead of the prototypes’ steel, the volumes required to make a profit were beyond the factory’s capabilities.

“We were trying to get a tie-up with Rootes and Jensen,” explains Martin, “but the figures didn’t add up. So it was back to the old, ‘genuine’ TVRs.”

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