The Long Way for Crackers

The thing I remember is wanting to go out for crackers.

There are grander reasons to drive a sports car. A mountain pass. A circuit booked months in advance. A journey planned around a hotel with somewhere safe to leave it. But the Griffith did something more useful to my happiness: it made the smallest excuse sufficient.

Open the door. Lower yourself into the seat. Hear the engine roar into life and feel how close you are to it. Before you have gone anywhere, the errand has changed. You are still buying crackers. You are also about to have a very good time.

That is my memory of driving a TVR Griffith 500. It was in Wales, on a trip that had nothing to do with cars, and the car was a dark, deep navy blue, the kind of color that reads as black in the shade and only admits to being blue when the light finds it. The road was a classic British B-road: a turn, a straight, a turn you didn’t see coming, then another straight that ran out just before I was ready for it to. The low position. The wind in my hair. The smile I could feel on my face. The impression that the cabin contained little beyond me, 3 pedals and access to an unreasonable amount of force.

Of course there was more to the car than that. But memory is a ruthless editor. It keeps what mattered.

The memory comes back from the seat outward. First the position of my body, low in the car. Then the engine, close and insistent. Then the air. The world had acquired a different perspective, and I was enjoying my place in it.

The anticipation is what returns most strongly. Even before getting in, I knew the next drive would contain something worth feeling. The door was an invitation. Sitting down was a commitment to paying attention. Starting the engine was the point at which the rest of the day lost some of its authority.

There is a particular relief in finding something that makes you enthusiastic without requiring an elaborate occasion. Most of adult life encourages us to explain our pleasures: justify the expense, find the time, organize the conditions. The Griffith made its case immediately, in a language that required very little translation.

You could hear it.

It made the smallest excuse sufficient.

The shape helps explain the attraction. The 1990s Griffith has a fullness to its fenders and a compactness to its body that make the engine beneath the hood seem entirely appropriate. There is visual generosity in the curves, but little clutter. Look along its side and your eye can travel almost uninterrupted from nose to tail. It is a remarkably complete answer to the question of what a small British sports car might look like.

It very nearly looked like something else. Peter Wheeler, who owned TVR, wanted a traditional British sports car, and the first full-size foam model had upright, old-fashioned headlights to match. His engineer John Ravenscroft thought it looked boring, so one day he cut the front off the fender where the headlight sat, looked at the shape left behind and, as he told evo, “I thought, hmm, that looks nice…” That gave the Griffith its face. The rest of the body followed the same rule: no creases, no eyebrows over the wheel arches and no door handles anywhere on the outside.

That confidence mattered to TVR. The little company from Blackpool, founded in 1947 by Trevor Wilkinson and named for the capital letters in his first name, TreVoR, had spent much of the 1980s building quick, angular wedges that nobody called beautiful. Wheeler, a chemical engineer who had made his money supplying the oil industry, came to TVR the way most people do, as a customer, and bought it in 1981. The Griffith was his statement of what TVR could be, and in its retrospective, evo describes it as the model that transformed the company’s reputation and set the direction for everything that followed.

When TVR showed the prototype at the British Motor Show in Birmingham in 1990, legend has it that orders came in at a rate of 1 every 8 minutes. The show car sat on the chassis of the older TVR S. For production, TVR moved it onto the bigger, stronger tubular steel chassis of its Tuscan racer, under a fiberglass body. Underneath, it was a race car in its Sunday best.

Even the name looked back. In 1963, an American TVR dealer named Jack Griffith put a Ford V8 into the little TVR Grantura. Wheeler, a great fan of that decade’s British sports cars, borrowed the name and the promise that came with it: a small, light British body with far too much V8 in the front.

Seen today, it can look reassuringly traditional. Seen in its own time, that purity had force. A small company had arrived at a shape that did not need apologizing for, explaining away, or dressing in someone else’s prestige. It looked desirable on its own terms.

Among the PorschesJoy Over Status

That is an important distinction for anyone who has ever parked an unusual car among more familiar exotica. The pleasure need not involve winning a contest. You can admire the Porsche next to you, appreciate the Ferrari across the parking lot, and still feel absolutely settled about the keys in your hand.

TVR always knew who it was up against. Its real target was Porsche, and it took open delight in stealing Porsche’s customers. At a British motor show in the mid-1990s, evo reports, TVR’s PR manager noticed that Porsche was handing its customers and prospects lapel badges to get them onto the Porsche stand. That made them very easy to spot. TVR’s people simply walked over and invited them across the aisle.

Part of the feeling is rarity. TVR built about 2,600 Griffiths in 12 years, and you could go to car meets for a decade without seeing one. In America the odds are longer still. Wheeler pulled TVR out of the US market in 1986, so not a single Griffith was ever sold new here. Every one on an American road came the long way around.

The Griffith offers a very personal form of satisfaction. You chose the proportions, the sound, the exposure, the particular combination of beauty and effort. Someone else may need the badge explained. You already have your reasons.

A Griffith owner parked beside a Ferrari isn’t claiming the more expensive car. They’re claiming the better choice, made entirely on how a car feels and not at all on what it says about the bank balance. Nostalgia, with modern power. They chose joy over status.

And they would do it again tomorrow.

The heartNostalgia With Modern Power

The car I drove was the 500, with the 5.0-liter version of the Rover-derived V8. That gives the memory a mechanical identity: a substantial engine in a compact roadster, with the kind of reserve that can make a small movement of your right foot feel significant.

That engine is the other half of the nostalgia. The all-aluminum Rover V8 began life as a Buick around 1960, so under that very British hood sat an American idea from the dawn of the decade, reworked in Blackpool until it embarrassed far more expensive cars.

The 500 also makes a natural center for the Griffith story. Introduced in 1993, it carried the model through the rest of its production life. But it wasn’t the only Griffith. The first cars had a 4.0-liter with 240 hp. Then came a 4.3-liter with 280 hp, which more than 70% of buyers chose, according to the RAC, and a 300 hp big-valve version of the 4.3.

They don’t feel the same. In evo’s retrospective, the 5.0-liter’s attraction is its generous torque, peaking at 4,000 rpm, so you can enjoy substantial acceleration without constantly chasing the top of the rev range. The earlier, smaller engines are more willing to rev and love to be wound out. 2 versions of pleasure emerge from the same basic idea.

To understand how concentrated that experience was, picture a 2026 Mazda MX-5. The Griffith measures just 153.2 inches (3,892 mm) nose to tail, about an inch (23 mm) shorter than the Mazda’s 154.1 inches (3,915 mm). TVR lists the 500 at 1,060 kg (2,337 lb); the current US manual soft-top MX-5 is listed at 1,073 kg (2,366 lb). When Performance Car magazine actually weighed a Griffith 500 with fuel aboard, it came in at just over 1,200 kg (2,646 lb), which is about as TVR as a statistic gets. Either way, imagine that familiar little-roadster footprint, then lift the hood and find a 5.0-liter V8.

The advertised power makes the proposition wonderfully excessive: 340 hp in TVR’s heritage specification, against the Mazda’s 181 hp. A later TVR specification sheet quotes 320 hp, so the number depends on which sheet you read, and neither is a measured output for the car I drove. TVR advertised 0–60 mph in 4.1 seconds and a top speed of 169 mph in the first, 167 mph in the second, which also claims 0–100 mph in 10.5 seconds. The intention is unmistakable. Almost MX-5-sized, almost MX-5-weight, with the appetite of something much larger.

Those numbers put substance behind the memory of brute force. They also explain why the pleasure demanded attention: a smooth input, a considered gear change, a right foot that understood it was asking a great deal of 2 rear tires. The reward was the feeling of taking part in something intensely alive.

And that is where the earlier 4.3 deserves to enter the story.

Among Griffith enthusiasts, the 4.3 pre-cat has a particularly devoted following. “Pre-cat” identifies the early cars built before catalytic converters became mandatory on new gasoline cars in 1993, rather than a later exhaust modification. Writing for Hagerty, Andrew Frankel singles out the 4.3 as his favorite: barely slower than the 5.0, he says, and with “a soundtrack you’d happily have played at your funeral.” That is an experienced reviewer’s preference, rather than a verdict everyone shares. But it is a compelling reason to listen more closely.

There is a specific car behind another revealing account: the dark-green 1992 4.3 Big Valve, owned by Sam Shuttlewood, that Jethro Bovingdon tested for Hagerty. It wore larger 17-inch wheels to make tire replacement easier, so even this early example had evolved. Bovingdon describes unassisted steering that is heavy at parking speeds and lightens once you’re moving, a tough, mechanical gearshift, and an engine as happy to cruise as it is to rush for the top of its rev range.

The Big Valve version adds another layer of interest, but the broader 4.3’s appeal is already clear. It invites a story about response, revs and sound. The 500 invites one about the delicious availability of a large engine’s effort. Choosing between them can be a matter of which part of driving you most want to prolong.

For one person, the pleasure might lie in letting the engine build toward the next change. For another, it might be the confidence that a strong response is already there, with little need to rearrange anything. Neither preference needs to be defended with a faster time. The 2 drivers are listening for different things.

None of that makes the 4.3 the best-balanced Griffith. A sympathetic engine is one kind of balance; chassis behavior is another, and it depends on tires, suspension, maintenance and the particular car. The fairer description is a cherished early alternative, with advocates who value exactly what sets it apart from the 500.

I have my own memory of the 5.0-liter car. The 4.3’s story comes through those who have driven it. Together they make the Griffith more interesting: one beautiful shape could sustain more than one lasting attachment.

InsideYou, 3 Pedals and a Lot of Engine

But a capacity figure alone does a poor job of communicating proximity. In my recollection, the engine was almost a fellow occupant. The sound did not sit at a polite distance from the driving experience. It was part of the physical arrangement: seat, pedals, hands, engine, open air.

The cabin makes that arrangement plain. It is small and very low. You drop into the seat rather than settle into it, and the seats themselves are soft and narrow, comfortable for hours but not much help holding you in place, so through faster corners you find yourself bracing your left leg against the transmission tunnel. Your left arm falls onto the wide center console. The short gear lever sits directly on top of the 5-speed gearbox.

Nothing but you, 3 pedals and a great deal of engine.

It is also more thoughtful than people expect. Nick Coughlan designed the cockpit, and almost nothing in it is borrowed without being disguised: TVR’s own dials, bespoke aluminum switches, and even the stalks on the steering column, which came from Vauxhall, swapped for machined aluminum ones so the parts bin wouldn’t show. Getting out takes a moment’s thought. There are no handles on the outside of the doors, and the interior release isn’t on the door either. It’s down by your knee, on the side of the center console. A Griffith makes you learn it, the way you learn a person.

That closeness changes the significance of familiar actions. Moving your foot, selecting a gear, letting the clutch come back through its travel: these become events you notice. You are involved in the sequence. The pleasure has texture and timing. Even a modest burst of acceleration can carry a feeling of consequence because you have participated in producing it.

The wind adds another layer. The roof looks like a soft top, but the front section is a rigid targa panel, held tight by the tension of the folding rear section, so it doesn’t balloon and flap at speed. Take it off and the journey has edges that a closed cabin can soften. Air reaches you. The environment occupies more of your attention. The road feels like a place you are moving through with your whole body involved, rather than a view passing beyond glass.

I remember the smile because it was so uncomplicated. There was no need to consider whether the car’s performance would still impress someone reading a comparison test years later. The experience had already justified itself.

On the roadEverything It Does, It Does Because You Asked

That is why treating the Griffith as an acceleration statistic misses so much. Performance ages on paper. Some newer machine will always be quicker, easier to launch, or better at repeating the result. A remembered sensation is harder to supersede. It belongs to an encounter, and encounters do not have model years.

There is no ABS. There is no traction control. There is no stability control quietly braking a wheel to save you from yourself. TVR made a virtue of that, arguing that leaving all that technology out made for a purer car, and whatever you think of the argument, you feel it immediately.

Everything the car does, it does because you asked it to.

Ask it to turn and the nose darts into the corner, so eagerly that the softer rear end has to hurry to keep up. Lift off the throttle in the middle of a bend and you can feel the back go light. In the wet, everyone who has driven one says the same thing in their own words: be gentle with your right foot. Smooth your inputs, though, and the Griffith stops fighting you and starts to flow, the torque linking one curve to the next.

Not everyone finds it sharp. Frankel calls it closer to a 1960s Big Healey than a modern sports car, softly sprung and at its best as a sporting tourer. Wheeler would probably have taken that as a compliment. He once joked to evo that TVR sorted out its ride and handling on a couple of bumps and potholes at the bottom of Bristol Avenue, the street outside the factory, and if a car got over those without complaint, it was ready to go.

On that B-road in Wales, none of it needed a stopwatch. The turns arrived one after another, and the car met every one of them like it had been waiting all week for the chance.

The car also asks something of the driver. A powerful older roadster deserves calm inputs, attention to conditions, and an honest understanding of its state of repair. There is no romance in confusing neglect with authenticity. A car that feels unsettled may need investigation, not a flattering story about its wild character.

Griffith buying guides place particular emphasis on the steel chassis beneath the fiberglass body. Its only factory rust protection was powder coating, and corrosion can be concealed, especially around the outriggers. Suspension wear can also change how a car responds. These are central to whether the beautiful thing above the surface delivers the experience its owner expects.

There will be owners for whom an inconvenient repair dominates the memory. Their experience deserves the same respect as an ecstatic one. Loving a car does not make lost weekends, unexpected bills, or anxiety about a noise imaginary. The friction is real, and it can be enough to end the relationship.

For those who stay, maintenance can become a way of protecting a pleasure they understand very clearly. Fresh components, careful inspection, a trusted specialist: these have an emotional purpose. They preserve the ability to open the door with anticipation instead of doubt.

An owner need not do the work personally to care deeply about it. The connection is not measured in scraped knuckles. It can be expressed through patience, saving for the right repair, asking questions, or refusing to postpone something important. There is affection in making sure the next drive has a fair chance of being a good one.

And that next drive need not be heroic. This is where the crackers matter. A sports car capable of enlivening a short trip has a place in life beyond the days reserved for it. The ordinary destination supplies the permission; the car supplies the appetite.

Think about how rarely we remember a routine errand. The purpose is fulfilled, the journey disappears, the day continues. A car that changes that pattern has given you something unusually tangible: a few minutes that survive.

It can also change the moment before departure. You find yourself pleased that something needs doing. The obligation becomes an opportunity. The world has accidentally handed you a reason to get behind the wheel, and you are grateful for its lack of imagination.

That is a modest kind of freedom, but a valuable one. Freedom can be 20 minutes in which you are fully occupied by an activity you enjoy. It can be deciding to leave the house when you otherwise would have stayed in. It can be the small private certainty that the return journey is still ahead.

There is room here for the Lotus owner, too. A Griffith and an Elise express different priorities, brute force on one side and lightness on the other, but both appeal to a person who wants their decisions to reach the road through their hands and feet. Mutual respect between their owners makes perfect sense. Each recognizes that the other has accepted some inconvenience in pursuit of a feeling.

When they pass in a parking lot, they nod.

That recognition need not exclude anyone else. Enthusiasm is more interesting when it leaves space for different answers. The Porsche driver might have exactly the same attachment to a familiar bend or a cold morning departure. The Griffith’s individuality is secure enough to survive that admission.

What makes it special is the particular way its elements come together. The compact body and substantial engine. The graceful shape and unapologetic sound. The low seat and open sky. Its personality emerges from those relationships, and from the driver who responds to them.

It left something behind for TVR, too. On the strength of the Griffith, the softer Chimaera arrived on the same underpinnings and outsold it by more than 2 to 1, and by the end of the decade the Blackpool factory had doubled in size and was building 1,800 cars a year. The Griffith itself stayed in production, barely changed, until 2002, the last 100 or so built as the 500 SE. Wheeler sold TVR in 2004 and died in 2009, at 65. In 2017, a revived TVR unveiled a new Griffith, to be built in Ebbw Vale, in South Wales. When evo last took stock, late in 2025, not one had reached a customer.

The new one was supposed to be built in Wales.

I know which of the 2 I’ve driven there.

For someone who once owned one, the strongest reminder may be very small: the way a familiar control fell to hand, a view over the hood, a sound caught unexpectedly from another street. Nobody else can supply the precise detail. That belongs to the person who was there.

My own memory is simpler. I remember a dark navy car on a Welsh B-road. I remember being down in it, feeling close to the engine, and loving the prospect of what came next. I remember that it seemed impossible for a journey to be completely ordinary once it had begun this way.

I would not turn that into a claim that the Griffith was perfect. Perfection is too distant a word for something remembered so physically. The feeling was immediate, almost mischievous. Here was a beautiful car making a perfectly sensible activity feel like an indulgence.

There are many ways to measure a sports car. You can inspect its engineering, compare its performance, count its production, trace its history. All of those approaches reveal something worth knowing. But there is another test that takes place much closer to everyday life.

Does it make you want to go?

The Griffith did. It made the door worth opening and the seat worth lowering myself into. It made the engine’s first roar a promise I believed. It put the wind in my hair and a smile on my face, and it left behind a memory that does not require a stopwatch to remain vivid.

Somewhere at the end of the journey, there were crackers to buy.

The trip home was still to come.

Sources and notes

• John Barker and Peter Tomalin, “TVR Griffith (1990–2002): Britain’s ‘anti-Porsche’ was a raw sports car,” evo, updated August 2025: the company’s transformation, John Ravenscroft and the foam model, the Tuscan chassis, the engines’ character, the cockpit and roof, the driving impressions, the Performance Car weighing, the Porsche lapel badges, Bristol Avenue, factory growth and specifications. evo.co.uk
• Andrew Frankel, “Future classic: TVR Griffith,” Hagerty UK, December 2022: the 4.3 as his favorite and the Big Healey comparison. hagerty.co.uk
• Jethro Bovingdon, “Retro rematch: TVR Griffith vs Honda S2000,” Hagerty UK, April 2022: the 1992 4.3 Big Valve. hagerty.co.uk
• TVR, Griffith 500 model page and Wheeler-era history: heritage figures, dimensions, production and Peter Wheeler’s background. tvr.co.uk, tvr.co.uk
• TVR, later Griffith 500 specification sheet: 320 hp, 167 mph, 0–100 mph in 10.5 seconds. tvr-mads.co.uk
• Mazda USA, 2026 MX-5 Miata specifications: power and weight. mazdausa.com. MX-5 and Porsche 911 lengths: Wikipedia.
• evo, “TVR: why we think it’s all over,” November 2025: the new Griffith and the Ebbw Vale factory. evo.co.uk
• Car & Classic, “Five things you need to know about the TVR Griffith”: chassis and outriggers. carandclassic.com
• PistonHeads, TVR Griffith used buying guide: power by version and price new. pistonheads.com
• Octane, TVR Griffith buying guide: the 500 SE, limited-slip differential and hot starts. octane-magazine.com
• RAC, TVR Griffith used car review: engine choice and the service agent’s mileage rule. rac.co.uk
• Autocar, used buying guide: the 1993 catalytic converter requirement. autocar.co.uk
• Classic & Sports Car, 2012: powder coating as the only factory chassis protection. classicandsportscar.com
• Classics World, TVR Griffith buyer’s guide: the Range Rover starter conversion. classicsworld.co.uk
• Just British, on Peter Wheeler’s death in 2009 and TVR leaving the US market in 1986. justbritish.com
• L’Automobile Sportive, on TVR’s name and Jack Griffith. automobile-sportive.com
• Money: 1993 exchange rate from Bank of England daily rates via Pound Sterling Live; inflation from in2013dollars (UK CPI); 2026 exchange rate about $1.33, October 14, 2026.