TVR

TVR is an independent British manufacturer of sports cars based in the English city of Blackpool, Lancashire. The company manufactures lightweight sports cars with powerful engines and was the third-largest specialised sports car manufacturer in the world, offering a diverse range of coupés and convertibles. Most vehicles use an in-house straight-6 cylinder engine design; others an in-house V8. TVR sports cars are composed of tubular steel frames, cloaked in aggressive fibreglass body designs.
TVR's two arms are TVR Engineering, which manufactures sports cars and grand tourers, and TVR Power, their powertrain division.
Trevor Wilkinson bought a wheelwright's business in Blackpool in 1946, renaming it Trevcar Motors in 1947, for the purpose of selling and repairing cars and light engineering.
In 1947, Wilkinson built his first car, a special two-seater body on an Alvis Firebird chassis for himself. As a result, Wilkinson with partner Jack Pickard then started a separate company, TVR Engineering, with a name derived from Wilkinson's name – TreVoR. Their first car was an alloy-bodied two seater on a tubular chassis, which appeared in 1949.
In 1953 the concept of glass-reinforced plastic bodywork over a tubular steel backbone chassis was accepted, and continued throughout TVR's current production history. In 1954, TVR Engineering was renamed TVR, in light of the launch of the first "production" car called the Mk1, later name Grantura. The glass fibre body design and layout remained, in modified form, until replaced by the angular wedge design Tasmin in 1980.
At the launch in the 1950s, TVRs were powered by 4-cylinder engines from Coventry Climax, BMC or Ford, the performance models having Shorrock superchargers. As with many other British sports cars, engine sizes remained under two litres, and all produced less than 100 bhp (75 kW). As most TVRs were sold in the domestic British market, to avoid a British tax on assembled cars many of the early cars were sold in kit form – a practice which continued until the 1970s, when the tax loophole was closed and the kit-form option removed.
In the 1980s, under the ownership of Peter Wheeler — a chemical industry consultant and TVR enthusiast — TVR moved away from naturally-aspirated and turbocharged V6s back to large V8s, namely the Rover V8 . Capacity grew from 3.5 to 5 litres.
In July 2004, 24-year-old Nikolay Smolensky bought the company from Wheeler.
In April 2006, responding to falling demand and with production rumoured to have dropped from 12 cars a week to 3 or 4, TVR laid off staff and announced plans to move to updated facilities in the Squires Gate district of Blackpool.
In October 2006 Smolensky announced that body production and final assembly for TVR would move to Turin, Italy, with only engine production remaining in the UK.  By December 2006, it emerged that Smolensky had split TVR into a number of different companies:
Brand and intellectual property rights had been transferred to a core Smolensky company
TVR Motors – held the licence to the brands and intellectual property in the UK, as well as sales and marketing of the brand
TVR Power – the parts and spares business had been sold to a management buyout
Blackpool Automotive – the factory and manufacturing assets
By 24 December Blackpool Automotive was in administration.  Since then Smolensky has regained control of the company and was hoping to restart production, with a target of 2,000 cars to be sold in 2008.