TVR’s new British owners will ‘carry forward the DNA’ of the brand, the marque’s incoming director has promised Top Gear in an exclusive interview.

Les Edgar, who fronts TVR Automotive Ltd, the UK company this week revealed to have purchased the TVR name from former Russian owner Nikolai Smolenski, says his company has ‘a lot of plans’ for the sports car brand, and ‘won’t make the mistakes that have been made in the past’.



“We’ve done a lot of background work,” said Edgar, a Surrey-based entrepreneur best known for developing video games and for reintroducing Aston Martin to GT racing. “This wasn’t a snap decision. We have the money to do it, and we have a unique collection of people with business acumen and passion.”

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Former owner Smolenski - who bought TVR for a reported £15m in 2004 but failed to build any new cars - had threatened to slap the TVR name on wind turbines, but Edgar assured Top Gear that the new owners would keep the company firmly in the automotive sphere. “We bought TVR for what it is, and we don’t want to dilute that. We want to build on the DNA, and that’s unlikely to apply to anything but cars.”

Edgar admitted that, due to non-disclosure agreements, he wasn’t at liberty to reveal any more information, but was keen to stress that he and his associates will respect TVR’s heritage… and Britishness.

“You can’t let these great brands disappear or go abroad,” he said. “The starting point was ‘let’s get it back’. There’s a huge amount of passion with the TVR brand. You’d be hard-pushed to find a British car brand that generates so much passion.”



Edgar couldn’t confirm when we might see a new TVR or what form it might take, and was keen to quash the frenzied speculation that’s emerged online since the homepage on the TVR website this week bore the slogan ‘Roaring Back’. “We’ll be making more announcements in due course,” he told TG. “But you’ll have to wait and see.”



So while we wait, what would you like to see from 21st century TVR, TG.com?