TVR Grantura: slip-sliding away

By Simon Hucknall

| 21 May 2025

Classic & Sports Car – TVR Grantura: slip-sliding away

You couldn’t really fault TVR’s chutzpah at the dawn of the 1960s.

Despite being in financial freefall, the small Blackpool company mooted a potential Le Mans works entry to raise its profile in international motorsport.

While common sense eventually prevailed and the plan was dropped due to a lack of funds, it certainly influenced the production of four works-prepared Grantura models designed specifically for competition use.

This example, the first built, gives us a rare insight into what might have been a game-changer for TVR at the time.

Meet the rare, and very sideways, TVR Grantura

We’ll return to this remarkably original car and the intriguing mystery that surrounds its racing provenance.

When new, it epitomised TVR’s – and its customers’ – enthusiasm for competition through various iterations of the Grantura from the late 1950s.

Trevor Wilkinson (T, V and R are plucked from his first name) developed his first chassis in 1949, powered by a Ford sidevalve ‘four’ and dressed with a rudimentary glassfibre body.

The Grantura was TVR’s first genuine production car, and this Mk2 is a lightweight special

The basic tubular backbone chassis design was honed during the early 1950s.

By 1955, the suspension had become all-independent via trailing arms and transverse torsion bars derived from the Volkswagen Beetle.

An open-bodied model was built around this, mainly for the American market, using a 1098cc Coventry Climax engine, forming the basis for the now more familiar hardtop coupé that was to follow in 1957.

This in turn begat, from 1958, what would become known as the Grantura, TVR’s first fully in-house-styled model and its first genuine production car.

The TVR Grantura was an accessible and effective competition machine

The Grantura capitalised on the emerging club-racer set’s demand for a simple, light and competent road-legal track car available with a variety of engines to suit different budgets.

Despite TVR’s best efforts to appeal to road-only users with options such as leather trim, a heater/demister and windscreen washer, the car’s high roll-centre, due to the design of the VW suspension, dictated stiffer springing, making it enjoyable on a smooth circuit but jarring on poorly surfaced roads.

However, being available in kit form, it neatly sidestepped the UK’s hated Purchase Tax, making the car an appealing choice for impecunious weekend racers.

This one-of-four TVR Grantura wears thinner-gauge glassfibre bodywork

It was priced in kit form from £660, equipped with the lowliest 35bhp, 1172cc Ford 100E engine.

Also available were Coventry Climax’s 1098cc FWA or 1216cc FWE engines, a Shorrock supercharger promoting the Ford motor to 56bhp, and the MGA’s 1489cc unit.

Only 100 Mk1 Granturas are thought to have been produced before the Mk2 (represented by ‘our’ car) and 2A models appeared in 1960 and 1961 respectively.

The TVR Grantura is tricky to access, but it’s comfortable once inside

Visually identifiable by their extended tailfins, slightly flared rear wheelarches and front indicators mounted on the bonnet close to each headlight, the basic design and engineering remained as before.

However, the default engines were now all from the MGA – displacing from 1489cc to 1622cc – with the Abingdon car’s four-speed gearbox, or the option of 1216cc Climax power with a ZF gearbox, plus Morris Minor rack-and-pinion steering to replace the previous, 100E-based worm-and-peg set-up.

The revised models also gained Austin-Healey 100 drum brakes all round, with the Mk2A receiving standard Girling front discs.

The TVR Grantura’s Coventry Climax engine loves to rev

Despite a healthy demand for the Grantura, though, TVR was in a whirlwind of financial turmoil.

Under pressure to increase production to two cars per month from the company’s Hoo Hill factory, Trevor Wilkinson was forced to seek extra investment.

Help came from a syndicate of TVR enthusiasts comprising Henry Moulds, David Scott-Moncrieff, Irving Harris, David Hosking and Frank Lambert, who joined Wilkinson to form Layton Sports Cars Ltd (the name was taken from the firm’s then largest distributor, based in Cheshire).

Nonetheless, the fact that the manufacturer’s holding company changed twice more – first to TVR Cars Ltd, then Grantura Engineering – by 1963 should tell you all you need to know about the parlous state of TVR’s management and finances in this tumultuous period.

The TVR Grantura’s steering is light but full of feedback

By 1962, Wilkinson had departed from the company he founded, frustrated that its ambitions had exceeded the fundamental ability to maintain a stable commercial platform.

Two years before this debacle, however, Wilkinson must have been buoyed by the plethora of successful club drivers in the UK flying the flag for the firm.

Keith Aitchison, Peter Bolton and Colin Escott were among the most notable, mainly piloting Coventry Climax-powered Grantura Mk1s.

Joining them for the 1960 season was Brighton garage proprietor Mary Wheeler, who caused quite a stir in her FWE-engined Mk1: she took the Ladies’ Award at Firle Hill Climb in May and made her racing debut at Goodwood the following month, finishing third in a five-lap handicap event.

The TVR Grantura’s magnesium-alloy wheels help reduce weight

Plenty more club drivers were joining the TVR fray, too, which might explain why the Blackpool folk hatched the audacious plan to enter Le Mans in 1961.

In preparation, four lightweight competition Granturas were put into production, each with a lighter yet stronger chassis, powered by the well-proven 1216cc Coventry-Climax engines working through close-ratio gearboxes, for entry in the Grand Touring 1300 class.

The cars used thinner-gauge glassfibre bodies, with even the external doorhandles removed to save weight and the interior levers replaced by tiny pull-chains let into hand-stitched fabric door cards.

Lightweight magnesium-alloy wheels replaced the Grantura’s standard steel rims, and Alfin brake drums were fitted all round.

The TVR Grantura has beautiful balance

The specification boasted all the ingredients for a successful Le Mans campaign, but so beleaguered were TVR’s finances that not only was the entry canned, but the cars also had to be sold to help keep the company afloat.

Factory records from this period were destroyed in a fire many years ago, but it is believed that Grantura racers James Boothby (a London TVR dealer), Betty Haig, Colin Escott and Arnold Burton (of the famed tailoring family) purchased the cars direct from TVR.

‘Our’ car – chassis 7 C 238 – was the first of the four to be built and originally registered AUD 100 in October 1960.

There is no certainty about which high-profile races it entered the following season, but the evidence suggests it became the Arnold Burton-sponsored car, driven by John Woolfe.

The TVR Grantura’s Perspex rear windscreen has holes for ventilation

If so, it would have raced in two of the most important sports-car events in 1961: Snetterton’s Lombank Trophy on 25 March and Goodwood’s Fordwater Trophy on Easter Monday on 3 April, recording a DNF and an unknown result respectively.

The debate around the car’s race provenance in this period stems from its identical sibling – chassis 7 C 345, registered 126 RO – also having had the potential to compete in those races, with Woolfe driving.

Even though 126 RO wasn’t registered until four days after the Goodwood event, it was common for TVR and other manufacturers to enter cars wearing trade plates, which may have been the case here.

With contemporary programmes not listing an entrant’s registration, and the limited archive photography from both races giving nothing away, no one can state categorically whether ‘our’ car competed or not.

The TVR Grantura has twin Weber carburettors to feed its 1216cc ‘four’

All the same, AUD 100 (as it was) enjoyed an active race career through the 1960s and into the 1970s.

In late 1961 it was sold to Michael Sargeant, who competed in national events.

These included the BRSCC’s British Sports Car Championship, with the car by then running an MGA engine with twin Weber 40 DCOEs, replacing its original Climax unit.

At the end of 1964, William ‘Bill’ Cook bought the car and campaigned it in club events at Brands Hatch and Snetterton until 1971, after which it had some limited road use before being laid up.

Weighing just 1456lb, the nimble TVR Grantura makes the most of its rev-hungry, 1.2-litre, Climax engine’s 95bhp

In 1996, when the Grantura was purchased by Jim Lowry, it had still only accrued 3500 miles.

“It was so original – it hadn’t been touched since 1971,” Jim says.

The car’s registration was lost or sold at some point, so a new, period-correct number was acquired, which it wears today.

Jim went on to purchase 126 RO – this car’s original twin – and kept both together for a spell.

It wasn’t until 2013, though, that restorer Ivan Dutton acquired 7 C 238 from Jim and undertook a restoration back to its 1961 spec.

The TVR Grantura has strakes above the rear wheelarches – a subtle concession to style

The car then returned to competition, with entries across Europe in the Pre-64 GT Championship and a showing at Goodwood’s Members’ Meeting.

Its current owner has taken up its racing mantle, as evidenced by the car’s eligibility at FIA events until 2027.

Hunkered down outside Pendine’s offices at Bicester Motion, the Grantura looks small and brutish, the epitome of a purposeful ’60s club racer.

Zero overhangs front and rear, a subtly domed roof and the stubby rear wings, which carry the tail-lights and the pronounced alloy fuel filler, all create a highly functional whole, with the Jensen 541-like strakes over the rear wheelarch tops perhaps the only concession to styling.

The TVR Grantura is raucous and a little unrefined, but unrelenting fun to drive on a circuit

The lightweight ‘wobbly web’ wheels are shod with Dunlop Racing tyres, the sight of which, on this sharp, damp winter’s morning, fills me with some trepidation.

It is believed that Michael Sargeant, the car’s second owner, added the yellow stripe over the dark blue coachwork, but either way its appearance – right down to the Perspex rear ’screen with its three vent holes – is just as it would have been in late 1961/early ’62.

Lift the front section to expose the Grantura’s chassis, suspension and mechanicals, and its Climax FWE engine still appears tiny, even in such a small car, and slightly dwarfed by the generous twin Weber 40 DCOEs hanging off the side of it.

But the motor sits nice and low in the chassis, and is Triumph Herald-like in terms of accessibility.

This TVR Grantura still has its original passenger seat

You enter the car by pulling down the driver’s-side window from the outside (a little block attached to it enables this) and reaching inside for the tiny chain in the door casing.

As always, being small aids entry into older sports cars, but even so, prising my 5ft 7in frame into the Grantura’s necessarily modern Sparco race seat (the nicely patinated original passenger bucket has been retained) and between the bars of its full rollcage requires more agility than expected.

Once you are strapped in with the Schroth six-point harness, you feel cocooned but comfortable.

The TVR Grantura’s rev counter, with its 7800rpm redline

The small, three-spoke Mountney wheel facing you is curiously canted slightly to the side; behind it are a tachometer, redlined at 7800rpm, and a 120mph speedo.

Five smaller dials form a neat row to the left, along with a haphazard line of push/pull knobs.

Having never driven a Grantura, I was a bit wary of its VW Beetle-derived suspension, ultra-short wheelbase and the Climax engine’s appetite for revs. I needn’t have been.

As soon as you fire up and pull away – noting the clutch’s high biting point and the notchy but precise gearshift – you can tell that it’s going to be an absolute riot before you even reach the track.

The TVR Grantura’s compact wheelbase and VW Beetle-derived suspension are, surprisingly, not at all to be feared

After a few warm-up laps on a – thankfully – drying circuit, you know for sure.

This TVR Grantura’s Climax, with its race cam, loves revs and is at its best over 4000rpm; keep it percolating above that and the car pings out of corners with real verve, but racing through ratios elicits crunches from the gearbox.

It’s not the sweetest-sounding motor, nor particularly refined, but its rumbustious nature suits the TVR to a tee. As does the handling.

The TVR Grantura’s minimal overhangs exacerbate its low-slung stance

Weighing less than 1400lb in this spec, you’d expect the Grantura to feel light at the helm, and it does.

But there’s also a lovely transparency to the steering feedback, mixed with a high-ish ratio that doesn’t leave you on tenterhooks every time you apply lock.

When you do, though, the car feels nicely balanced, rotating from the rear so progressively and controllably that it goads you into unnecessary hoonery, just for the hell of it.

Drive for speed, not drama, however, and this TVR Grantura is neat and rewarding.

‘There’s a lovely transparency to the feedback, and the car is nicely balanced, rotating from the rear progressively and controllably’

Its limited-slip diff is quite severe, so a firm hand and a positive throttle input through bends are always needed, but overall the car inspires confidence, and you can see why in recent years it has been such an accomplished racer.

It’s just a shame that, like so many other low-volume sports-car makers at the time, TVR was so poorly resourced that it could never take full advantage of the Grantura’s competition prowess.

The factory did, in ’62, enter Le Mans, but the car retired after just three laps.

It would be another 41 years before a TVR blasted down the Mulsanne Straight once again.

Images: Jack Harrison

Thanks to: Pendine Historic Cars; Jim Lowry; Rob Pennington

Factfile

TVR Grantura Mk2
(spec for standard production car)

Sold/number built 1960-’61/c400 (Mk2 & Mk2A)
Construction glassfibre body bonded to tubular backbone chassis
Engine all-alloy, sohc 1216cc ‘four’, twin Weber 40 DCOE carburettors
Max power 95bhp @ 7000rpm
Max torque n/a
Transmission four-speed manual, RWD
Suspension independent, by trailing arms, laminated transverse torsion bars, telescopic dampers f/r; front anti-roll bar
Steering worm and peg
Brakes Girling drums
Length 11ft 6in (3505mm)
Width 5ft 4in (1625mm)
Height 4ft (1219mm)
Wheelbase 7ft (2133mm)
Weight 1456lb (660kg)
0-60mph 10.8 secs (est)
Top speed 101mph (est)
Mpg n/a
Price new £1045 (kit)
Price now £35-45,000*