TVR stands for TreVoR. Really.

Peter Wheeler died three days ago. If you're not a car guy, you probably don't know who Peter Wheeler was. He was a pretty impressive guy. He did something very rare: he made a big fistful of money by building British sports cars.

TVR was founded in 1946 by Trevor Wilkinson of the Wilkinson sword family. The war had been won, he was young and rich and loved cars. So he thought he'd start making his own. The TVRs built in the 1950s and 1960s were lovely little things, running small four-cylinder engines. He never really made a lot of money selling TVRs, but they had a loyal following. Martin Lilley bought the company in 1965. He struggled along for several years, upgrading to V6 engines, finally releasing the rather unfortunately styled Tasmin in 1980. Enter Peter Wheeler. He was a chemical engineer who made a lot of money selling specialized engineering equipment to North Seas oil drilling companies. He bought a TVR, met Martin Lilley, one thing led to another and he ended up buying the company in 1981.

Wheeler kept the wedgy Tasmin in production for about 10 years, creating several variations on it. But the real step forward was when he developed the S series of cars in 1986. Out were straight lines and wedge shapes. In were soft curves and voluptuous shapes. It was an immediate hit, selling 2600 copies in eight years, including more than 400 with the ubiquitous Rover V8. This was the beginning of a new era at TVR. Beautiful cars with stunning performance made TVR the darling of both the motoring press and sports car fans around the world. Newer and even more beautiful cars began coming out of TVR with bewildering speed. The Chimaera, Griffith, Cerbera, Tuscan Speed 6, Tamora, T350C, Sagaris, Typhon, and the insane Speed 12 were all released in a span of only 10 years.

One problem with TVR was that all their engines came from other manufacturers. That left TVR at the whims of others. In the mid-1990s, all of TVR's V8 engines were coming from Rover. When BMW bought Rover, there was a very real possibility that the engine would be discontinued. So Peter Wheeler did something no other owner of TVR ever did: he built his own engines. Designed by John Ravenscroft and Al Melling at Melling's engineering company, the AJP8 (for Al, John and Peter) was immensely powerful. They also designed the less expensive AJP6 straight-six engine that was still very powerful but far cheaper to manufacture. These engines cemented the Peter Wheeler-era at TVR: beautiful cars, powerful engines, very light weight and no driver's aids. Wheeler thought that his cars were safer without ABS, traction control and all the other electronic nannies that go into the typical sports and luxury cars being built today. A driver who is actually involved in his driving is a safer driver than one who relies on the car to take care of things for him.

Wheeler did more than just run the company. He loved his sports cars and was constantly racing them. In the Tuscan Challenge, he was was in almost every race. The other competitors didn't mind that he might have some chassis parts they didn't, or a a specially built engine they didn't have. He was Peter Wheeler, and he was mixing it up on the track with with his customers. Luca di Motezemolo doesn't race Ferraris. Wendelin Wiedeking doesn't race Porsches. But Peter Wheeler raced TVRs.

At the height of TVR's popularity and profitability, Peter Wheeler sold the company and retired. A 24 year old Russian kid named NIkolai Smolenski bought the company for £15,000,000. He split the company into several different divisions, sold parts of it, rebought other parts, transfered assets and generally acted like a New York stock broker with the morals of a syphilitic mafia boss. Through all the political machinations, Smolenski forgot the most important thing: build cars. Demand dwindled to a trickle. No new cars were introduced. More soap opera-worthy headlines were produced then cars. Production halted for good in 2006. What Peter Wheeler had spent 23 years building, Smolenski had killed in only 3. The Blackpoole factory was closed, and despite promises from Smolenski of new production, no TVRs are being built.

The comparison between Smolenski and Wheeler shows just how extraordinary a man Peter Wheeler was. He was a man who made things happen. He made his money by building something people wanted, instead of manipulating paper assets. Unfortunately, there are far more Smolenskis than Wheelers in the world. And now we have one less.

The images below are all from the Gran Turismo 4 video game. I took the pictures myself. It's a selection of TVRs, all from the Peter Wheeler era. Enjoy them and remember a great man who made great cars.

Lincoln Stax

EDIT: I learned about this a couple of days after I wrote this, but after selling TVR to Smolenski, Wheeler wasn't through with building cars. He loved sailing, shooting and driving fast, so he decided to create a car that would allow him to indulge in all three hobbies. An amphibious car called the Scamandar RRV. It was still very much in the prototype stage when he died, but it was a functioning prototype. Check out the article at Jalopnik.com to see photos and a YouTube video of it in action.