1966' TVR 3500

This Ferrari eating TVR has recently been found in a barn/ garage after almost fifty years.

Classic car magazine

Buried TVR-Buick hillclimber
This muscular-looking TVR saw considerable success on the hills in 1967, ’68 and ’69 in the hands of Brian Alexander. He bought the car new in 1966 as an 1800S, the MGB-engined model that succeeded the very similar Grantura. Alexander, a skilled engineer and tuner, had considerable success before a radical engine swap. For the 1968 season, he replaced the B-series with a 3. 5-litre Buick V8 he imported, mating it with a Vauxhall Cresta gearbox – the only thing he could find that would handle the torque.
Alexander fabricated his own wishbones and uprated the dampers, then took on the big boys, often beating lightweight E-types and the famous Ferrari 250 LM campaigned by Jack Maurice. Class wins followed at the likes of Wiscombe, Prescott, Pontypool, Loton Park and Gurston Down, where Alexander lowered the hill record three times in one day.
He sold the car following the 1969 season, at which time the second owner commissioned TVR to fit the later rectangular rear lights and changed the colour to brown. It was sold again in the mid-1970s and changed colour once more to black, then disappeared into a large wooden barn in mid-Wales, from which it has only recently emerged. The owner was a client and friend of Cheshire-based coachbuilder Dave Moroney, who assisted the family with clearing the building after the gentleman died earlier this year. It was a huge task.
‘When you opened the doors, you couldn’t see the cars at first, there was so much stuff in there,’ he says. ‘It turned out there were 21 vehicles in and around the property. As well as this TVR there was a shortened 1928 Riley Nine rolling chassis and a 1932 Wolseley Hornet, plus more recent cars – Porsche 944s, a Marlin, a Scimitar and so on. But the TVR really caught my eye.’
With the other cars from the barn now sold on, Dave is hoping someone can return the TVR-Buick to the track. He says it needs a considerable amount of work after some 45 years in storage but is certainly no wreck – it can be jacked up safely, for instance. The car’s current registration is being retained by the family, but Moroney has matched the chassis plate and engine number to the documents, removing any doubt about its identity. He has applied for the number it wore during its competition career.

Registered GAD796D in January 1966 and now registered 7 EOJ. However, the chassis number would indicate that manufacture was May 1965. Found in the car was some new old stock round rear lights.

If interested please contact me and I can supply some more period shots and a selection of quotes from the motoring press from 1966 to 1969.