A 57-year-old TVR Trident went on sale the other day estimated at £80,000–£100,000, but the winning bid was £76,500. It was one out of the four prototypes the company created of a mass-market car that never came to be.
Back in the mid-1960s, the small British automaker was getting ready to start mass production of a sports car named Trident. Four prototypes were made, including three coupes and a convertible. The example sold earlier this week was the only right-hand-drive one, allowing the seller to call it ‘unique’.
It had a stainless-steel body with an aluminum hood, and the company built in in Turin based on the Griffith chassis. A 4.7-liter Ford V8 slotted in under the hood to work in tandem with a four-speed manual transmission and RWD. The car was envisioned with a 5-second standard launch time and a top speed of 241 km/h (150 mph).
This example was exhibited at the Turin Motor Show in 1965 and subsequently stored at the factory in a disassembled state. The restoration began in the late 1980s. Nearly all parts of the car are identical to the originals, albeit not original per se. The odometer reads 21,000 km, or 13,000 miles.
Financial difficulties prevented the company from releasing the Trident on the mass market. A car dealer named Bill Last acquired all the rights and documents for the coupe and convertible and launched his own production of the car, which it renamed to Trident Clipper. Like the original schematics envisioned, the car had a glass-fiber body.
