WHAT IF BUTLER HAD BOUGHT TVR?

In a garage on its own is a blue TVR Griffith 500, the second to last one made. Butler likes this car so much that he tried to buy the company that made it. And he was within weeks of doing so before Nikolai Smolensky bought it. “He ended up paying rather more than we were willing to,” says Butler. “We’d had a left-hand-drive Tuscan built that was to sort of American specs and had gone a long way down the road with fixing up to build TVRS in the US. A great shame.”

TVR instead went to a young zillionaire with no experience of the car industry and then onto someone who after years of trying hasn’t progressed the brand beyond what appears to be a fantasy project. Butler’s passion for cars would have been a boon and his business acumen even more valuable. You don’t set up a business in 28 countries without having your eye on the ball.