"Bring Back TVR," or, "Keeping the Russians Happy"

In the months since I first started this blog, I have picked up a substantial Russian following. Despite this, I have really done nothing involving any sort of Russian car. Lately, this has been weighing heavily on my mind. I watched 27 minutes of the film Eastern Promises and I have realized that I simply must do something to appease the Russians. If I don't write something about a Russian car, I fear that this may happen to me:

Aragorn stabs an unsuspecting blog writer in the face...or something

From a cursory examination of the headlines, I have deduced that if you are in Russia these days, you are either a natural gas oligarch or you are Pussy Riot. If you are the former, you may be in the market for a high priced performance car. If you are the latter, you are currently in jail and unfortunately will not be driving any time soon.

Not the intended audience.

This brings me neatly to the case of TVR. Although TVR will forever be considered a British car (much like Jaguar is considered British despite the fact that the man in charge is named Ratan Tata and he has chosen to headquarter the company in Mumbai) the 21st Century saw it as the plaything of a young Russian businessman named Nikolay Smolensky.

Unfortunately, Mr. Smolensky's management of the company was less than satisfactory, and in July, TVR was officially shut down for good. At this point, 96% of the world's population breathed a sigh of relief, because it meant that the company would stop churning out poorly made death machines. You honestly had a better chance of surviving a game of russian roulette (see what I did there?!?!?) than you did of surviving a Sunday drive in your TVR.

And that's a shame. They weren't bad looking cars and they had a rich racing history.

Sort of like a Lotus Evora but much more...violent

There's something incredibly sad seeing such a storied company fade into the annals of history. Well actually, TVR still exists, they just make wind turbines. Either way though, that's an extremely ignoble end to an automotive icon.

I will end this with an appeal. Mr. Smolensky, please bring back TVR. Proper TVR. Not wind turbine TVR. The Dutch have wind turbines covered. The Russians need this. And so do we.