There is only one TVR T440R in the world, and it is currently for sale

TVR has never had it easy. The British car manufacturer, famous for its sports cars, still struggling to bounce back after its collapse in the mid-2000s under the leadership of Russian banker Nikolay Smolensky. This episode left a number of projects on the cutting room floor, including this 2003 TVR T440R. It went on sale this week by Autolounge via Piston heads, and it’s the only one of its kind ever made.

Buckle up, because it’s a lot more confusing than it ever should have been. To keep things relatively short, the T440R was originally called the TuscanR and was designed as a road-approved version of what was to be TVR’s Tuscany-based GT1 class challenger. Then the branding changed for some reason, and TVR eventually sold two copies of this car – one called T400R, with a 4-liter inline six, and another called T440R, with a version of 4.2 liters from the same engine. The latter is the car on sale now.

This duo morphed into Typhon – a supercharged version with even more power. TVR only built and sold three of them according to Dyler, around the same time the company itself was bought by Smolensky. The change of ownership plunged the future of the model into limbo he never saw the path to, and no Typhoons have ever left the TVR factory.

That leaves this T440R as the only car of its specification ever made; a die-cast racing car for on-road use which, in typical TVR fashion, has never had its sharpest edges sanded. This was made very clear by reading some of the finer details of the car’s build.

TVR reused many engine components from the T440R race car for its road counterpart, although power was reduced to 440 horsepower, as you might have guessed by now. The ground is flat, like that of a GT. The chassis was made from a blend of carbon fiber and aluminum, with a separate carbon fiber tub inside and even more carbon fiber making up the body. Much of this carbon fiber can be seen from inside the cab where you too find two little ones back seats, believe it or not. Yes, despite all its TVR ripsnorting pedigree, this special homologation is technically a 2 + 2.

The T440R – the keyword being “the” – has 25,000 miles, which is more than you would expect for a pseudo-production car that has never run smoothly. Its price is £ 192,990, or around $ 265,000. With the new Griffith is not quite real yet, this is an unexpected opportunity to own one of the last televisions ever made. Or never did, depending on how you look at it.