This is the TVR White Elephant prototype from 1988, it’s the only one that was ever made, and it’s powered by an Australian 5.0 liter VL SS Group A SV V8 engine producing 440 bhp.
This car was built for TVR Managing Director Peter Wheeler back in 1988 with a view to it possibly becoming a new high-end production model. Wheeler would drive the car for two years, and even regularly take it pheasant hunting, but sadly it never made it into production.
Fast Facts: The TVR White Elephant Prototype
- The TVR White Elephant was a single 1988 prototype built as a possible flagship road car. It used a Tuscan Challenge race chassis and an Australian 5.0 liter VL SS Group A SV V8 producing about 440 bhp, giving supercar performance from a lightweight, low-volume British wedge.
- The car was commissioned by Peter Wheeler, who bought TVR in 1981 and led its V8-focused revival. Wheeler used the White Elephant as personal transport for roughly two years, even adapting the rear for his gun dog during countryside trips between Harrogate and Blackpool.
- Styling by John Ravenscroft bridged TVR’s sharp wedge era and its later curvier cars. The body kept a wedge profile but added wider arches, fixed headlights behind Perspex, and a Kammback tail, aiming to position TVR against luxury sports car rivals like Jaguar and Aston Martin.
- With double-wishbone suspension front and rear and extensive leather and walnut inside, the prototype proved fast and usable, hitting around 170 mph. TVR ultimately chose a different design path, and the car was stored for years before a long restoration returned it to running, sale-ready condition.
History Speedrun: The TVR White Elephant Prototype
The development of the TVR White Elephant prototype is the stuff of legend in TVR circles. It would be a one-off car built for the company boss, based on the Tuscan Challenge racer chassis, powered by an Australian racing engine – the 5.0 liter VL SS Group A SV V8 – and the interior would be trimmed like an Aston Martin of the era with bespoke leather and walnut trim.
Here we see former TVR Managing Director (and owner) Peter Wheeler, relatively early in his tenure at the legendary British sports car maker. Image courtesy of TVR.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a white elephant as being “an elephant with unusually pale skin; spec. an Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) of a kind having pale skin, hair, nails, and eyes.” Though it’s probably safe to assume that TVR was implying the second definition, “a burdensome or costly objective, enterprise, or possession, esp. one that appears magnificent; a financial liability.”
Peter Wheeler And TVR
Peter Wheeler had bought TVR in 1981, he was a lifelong TVR enthusiast and he had made a small fortune working as a chemical engineer supplying specialist equipment to the North Sea oil industry.
A 6’6″ Yorkshireman, Wheeler was a larger than life character who led TVR into one of the company’s golden ages – away from inline-fours and V6s to fire-breathing V8s and even some in-house developed engines for the first time in company history.
Seven years into Wheeler’s ownership in 1988 the company was at a crossroads of sorts, migrating slowly away from the sharp, wedge-shaped designs that had defined the company’s road cars since the late 1970s.
The TVR White Elephant Project
In some respects the White Elephant was the transitional model between the earlier TVR wedges and the later return to more curvaceous styling. TVR stylist John Ravenscroft would design the White Elephant still with the wedge profile, but he would introduce more curves, including curved wide-body wheel arches and a Kammback rear end.
In some respects the White Elephant was the transitional model between the earlier TVR wedges and the later return to more curvaceous styling. TVR stylist John Ravenscroft would design the White Elephant still with the wedge profile, but he would introduce more curves, including curved wide-body wheel arches and a Kammback rear end.
The pop-up headlights used on many earlier TVR wedges would be eschewed in favor of more modern fixed headlights behind perspex panels. The look has been compared to the BMW Z1, though it’s worth noting that the TVR debuted a year before the German roadster.
If anything, the headlights were likely inspired by the TVR Tina, an earlier one-off prototype from 1966 based on the Hillman Imp platform. Given the timeline, the White Elephant may very well have also been a much-improved update over the ill-fated TVR 420 Sports Saloon prototype from two years earlier in 1986.
Whatever the design roots of the car, the White Elephant was designed from the outset as a top-of-the-line TVR that would potentially allow the mighty little Blackpool-based automaker to start selling cars that could compete with the likes of Jaguar and Aston Martin.
John Ravenscroft had designed the body from the outset to fit neatly onto the stiff and excellent handling Tuscan Challenge race car chassis. Although the Rover V8 probably seemed like the most obvious choice, a discussion between Peter Wheeler and Tom Walkinshaw, the head of Holden Special Vehicles at the time, saw a prototype Holden VL SS Group A SV V8 engine shipped to England for use in the car.
This engine was probably chosen for a few reasons, the two most obvious being that it was a more modern fuel-injected V8 that would be able to pass stringent US emissions regulations while still providing excellent power output and not being as heavy as many comparably sized American V8s.
This engine was capable of 440 bhp at 5750 rpm and 390 lb ft of torque at 3,600 rpm, enough to send the lightweight 1300 kgs / 2870 lbs White Elephant on to 170 mph and resulting in a 0 to 60 mph time of just 4 seconds. To put that into perspective, it was almost 2 full seconds quicker in the 0 to 60 dash than the Ferrari Testarossa, one of the most iconic supercars of the age.
This is the TVR White Elephant prototype from 1988, it’s the only one that was ever made, and it’s powered by an Australian 5.0 liter VL SS Group A SV V8 engine producing 440 bhp.
The White Elephant inherited the independent front and rear suspension of the Tuscan Challenge chassis, with double wishbones and coil springs up front and a Jaguar XJ-S sourced wishbone and trailing arm set up in the rear.
Interestingly it was discovered that the rear anti-roll bar made the car undrivable at the limit, and so it was disconnected, which immediately resulted in better handling.
Inside the car you’ll find acres of green leather with tan piping, unusual upholstery colors have long been a TVR tradition. Walnut trim is used on the dashboard, gear knob, and door handles.
Wheeler famously had the rear of the car built with a cutaway section designed to act as a seat for his gun dog Ned, with a gun rack under the rear platform for when he went pheasant hunting at the Duke of Lancaster’s estate.
Funnily enough, Ned the gun dog is said to have roundly rejected his little seat alcove in the rear, and would instead sit up front on the leather bucket seat to better enjoy the view of the English countryside as it flew past.
After using the car as his personal transport for a couple of years to commute between the Yorkshire town of Harrogate and TVR’s factory in Blackpool, the White Elephant would be parked out the back of the factory under some scrap and largely forgotten about.
TVR management had decided to go in a different design direction for future cars, resulting in the back-to-classic TVR S series followed by the far more modern TVR Griffith and TVR Chimaera of the early-to-mid 1990s.
Inside the car you’ll find acres of green leather with tan piping, unusual upholstery colors have long been a TVR tradition. Walnut trim is used on the dashboard, gear knob, and door handles.
Many years later the White Elephant would be rescued by TVR enthusiast Howard Bryan who spent nine years restoring it, working with a team of former TVR employees to bring it back to its former glory.
The car is now being offered for sale out of Leicester, England by Shoo Automotive, led by company founder and larger-than-life character Ed Gibson. If you’d like to read more about the car or enquire about buying it, you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Shoo Automotive
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
