TVR Griffith : 200mph,1200 kg and 0–60mph in less then 4 secs

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YSSMAN
It seems to capture a bit more of the impactful modesty of the T350, but grabs some of the bonkers interior details of the later cars.
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Even the Tamora and T350 looked much weirder than this, all the TVR's from the 00's were odd looking things, it was just different degrees of madness. The interior does keep some of the quirkiness but still feels more tame and the aftermarket switchgear is disappointing, TVR used to mill bespoke switchgear. I really wouldn't know it was a TVR if it didn't have the badge on it.
 
Humm, reminds me of a TVR meets Z4 concept car...
bmw-z4-concept copy.jpg


tvr-griffith-003.jpg
 
My only issue is with the front. I dont think it should look too out there, and I don't think it's ugly.

Rather than expecting it to look out there I'm disappointed it's not as elegant as the Cerbera, 90's Griffith and early 00's Tuscan. Hopefully it's still a jaw dropper when you see it in the metal though. I see a Tuscan most days and it always turns heads.
 
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Rear and side profiles look spot on.

The front though looks like it's got a surprised expression. Can kind of see a bit of the Merc SLS in it as well.
 
I can actually see the good ol' Griffith on the front, without the license plate ofcourse is a little harder, but the headlights and the open 'mouth' on the front of the car, is giving me the goosebumps.

The rear isn't similar however, but it's definitely a new look, that I adore.

Light, NA V8, Manual..God sake, now I wish I was british myself to own it.
 
Fantastic! Great to hear that name TVR. So glad they are still around and typically retaining the same Approach of car and driver(Imagine the new rear wheel drive Type R NSX adopting this). Amazing in this era TVR still making a point with their simple but definitely not underwhelming analogue sport cars! 👍
 
Rejoice everyone! It's a reboot. Fresh start. Under 4 seconds to 60 doesn't matter. SLS lights and MX-5 air inlets don't matter. The Porsche alcantara steering wheel doesn't matter. What does matter? How fun it is, How long will UpperGearDriveClanSeventhGear etc, hold a drift in front of the camera, How many rattles will it have that get overshadowed by the Coyote V8?, How does it feel over speed bumps? and most importantly...How does it look in slow motion?
 
This is more than I could have hoped for. The arguably modest performance figures and not overly-aggressive styling are surely because this is their first model in x years, and they are testing the water, though thankfully people are snapping them up. It seems likely that we'll see higher spec versions later on, and hopefully a wider range of models, perhaps some a little more outlandish.
 
I keep thinking it's a different car is it a SLS is it a 86 or is it a MX-5 or is it a Viper?
I just want it to be a TVR because a TVR isn't like anything else.
 
Famine
Launch cars are £90,000. Future versions will be offered both cheaper and more expensive than that, so figure on a £75k starter.

Not in the present plans.

https://www.gtplanet.net/tvr-back-dead-new-500hp-griffith/
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If I were TVR, I'd be waiting for someone to offer to import the cars. They know it looks fantastic and some wealthy car nut will want to do it. You can bet they have a plan to do it, they just don't want to fund it. If the US doesn't like the Cosworth version of the engine, they can simply go with the bog stock Coyote and/or Voodoo units.

The new Ford Coyote is a stonkingly good engine. And I'm not a FoMoCoMoFo, I'm talking numbers. It has a very good specific torque rating, as well as spinning up pretty high to make good specific power. I'd like to see the tweak list Cosworth did to get the Coyote base engine to rival the Voodoo lump. The engine is a great choice for the car, and signifies a return to sensible low-volume vehicle manufacture for TVR. The V8 and 6 engines may have been excellent, but they were also expensive and arguably the downfall of the company.

£75k is a little steep since it has such a cooking powerplant but the early adopters don't care and can pay £90k or £75k. If they can turf out a few thousand a year then the secondhand market will be buoyant.

I like this car. I can live with the quirks. Anyone who says it looks like the Z4 concept and actually knows me will be shocked by me saying that's not a terrible thing, but then I'd follow up with "which would you rather have" and "at least the TVR has some original design touches". Also, I would agree with those people who say it looks a bit like a Toyota FT-1... specifically, the way the rear light clusters fit. If the Toyota FT-1 was done properly and actually looked good instead of trying to unsuccessfully mate an Aston Zagato and an F1 car (by physically inserting the F1 car into exhaust pipes of the Zagato) it could have looked a lot more like this.

I see a tiny bit of Cerbera/Chimera DNA in the face. Like, second cousin.

Interior looks like it's trying to hide the simplicity too hard. I'm okay with that, I know how hard it is to design this stuff for manufacture with low tooling costs, and I suspect GM* had a lot of input early on constraining the design engineers.

I approve this product, good luck TVR.

* Gordon Murray, not General Motors.
 
I think they've missed a trick not having lights in the front grill. It's a defining feature of the previous and original 60's Griffith.

The front of this new one is the most disappointing aspect of it in my eyes. Adding the lights would make it look a bit less generic.

dsc_3056griff.jpg
 
They committed the cardinal sin of fly-bys: lifting off before passing the camera...

It's mostly intake growl on the way towards us, then unsurprisingly mostly tyre noise off-throttle. Rules is rules, unfortunately - even for a TVR.

Sounds good despite that.
On the exhaust side, it doesn't sound like there's any cross linking between banks (H-pipe, X pipe etc.), I suppose for the same reason the exhaust is side exit.

I'm sure there'll be lots of people swapping the exhausts out soon enough...
 
Griffith500
They committed the cardinal sin of fly-bys: lifting off before passing the camera...

It's mostly intake growl on the way towards us, then unsurprisingly mostly tyre noise off-throttle. Rules is rules, unfortunately - even for a TVR.

Sounds good despite that.
On the exhaust side, it doesn't sound like there's any cross linking between banks (H-pipe, X pipe etc.), I suppose for the same reason the exhaust is side exit.

I'm sure there'll be lots of people swapping the exhausts out soon enough...
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I was thinking the exact same thing. It has a more mellow, uncrossed sound rather than the angrier V8 noise you get with a crossover tube. Part of me thinks this is the more British approach, but I must admit the scorched-earth soundtrack will be missed.
 
Eunos_Cosmo
I was thinking the exact same thing. It has a more mellow, uncrossed sound rather than the angrier V8 noise you get with a crossover tube. Part of me thinks this is the more British approach, but I must admit the scorched-earth soundtrack will be missed.
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It'd be interesting if they went a flat plane crank route, using the Ford V8s.
 
LMSCorvetteGT2
It'd be interesting if they went a flat plane crank route, using the Ford V8s.
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Purely from a sound perspective, I think that flat plane V8s (especially the Ford unit) sound a little coarse/harsh and flat at higher RPMs. A high strung cross plane (see BMW S65) sounds so much more beautiful to me.
 
Eunos_Cosmo
Purely from a sound perspective, I think that flat plane V8s (especially the Ford unit) sound a little coarse/harsh and flat at higher RPMs. A high strung cross plane (see BMW S65) sounds so much more beautiful to me.
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Okay, I don't mind either way, my point was to simply say that it's interesting they took in the cross plane crank ford units, and developed it to sound like it currently does. Which makes me wonder why they didn't just go for the 5.2 in the first place.
 
Well it sounds distinctly cross-plane to me, but more like a Cobra than a Griffith, the latter which is famed for its relatively unique sound resulting from some interesting exhaust routing:

19-L.jpg


That, in combination with the unusual firing order, was either utter genius or simply extremely lucky, as otherwise it most likely would have just sounded like a buzzy LS.

Also, with enough ingenuity, you can make any V8 sound like any other, if you really wanted to :)


Since Ford have switched back to the old flathead order, the intake will replicate some of that iconic Griffith growl, but overall it will sound most like a Cobra. Preferably a 289 :D
 
Sorry for the double post, but I fancied a bump.

In TVR's channel they have a clip of a Cerbera test mule at Dunsfold, purely to test the Cosworth / Coyote V8. It's understandably barebones:



Compare / contrast:



That's practically all intake sound in both clips. The classic Cobra is technically cheating as it's probably using a rear-exit exhaust with some kind of temporary merge (X-Pipe) for performance reasons. But then they do a lot of un-classic things in classic racing these days. You can only hear the exhaust off-throttle in both cases, anyway. The two engines use different firing orders, but the combination of the front-feed manifold (versus open stacks on the Cobra) and a smaller bore spacing on the Coyote somehow brings the sounds closer together than I expected.

The Griffith will likely have better sound deadening than the Cerbera (or the Cobra), and naturally the intake is already silenced to some degree in the fly-by video, but I think it all gives us a flavour of what sort of tones might be heard in the cockpit. Especially in their LeMans racer, if it's still in the plans...


On the same channel, there is ample proof the exhausts are two entirely separate branches - that makes silencing a harder task, and you can hear the strong pulsing from the uneven firing in the below video. It's acoustically well silenced, but the turbulent flow noise is harder to deal with. Perhaps this will prompt some SLR comparisons, too :D
 
Yeah that sounds like a traditional Ford V8 just worked over more to scream and get higher revs. To me it sounds like a 302, and the 289 doesn't sound too different from it either, nor does the 390. If you listen to the the Boss 302 you can hear an almost exact likeness to the test TVR posted.

Great sound.
 
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Yeah, I just hadn't heard a Coyote with an open intake before! The Boss is more or less the same: same firing order and same runner spacing.

I'm liking the combination of old-fashioned brutishness and up-to-the-minute materials and manufacturing. Even if I think it looks weird.
 

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