With its characteristically low-slung, somewhat hybrid appearance, the TVR was the brainchild of Trevor Wilkinson, an engineering enthusiast whose working life had begun as a garage mechanic. The car was to become something of an icon on the roads of Fifties’ Britain, providing sportiness and speed without breaking the bank for those who bought it.

Trevor Wilkinson was born in 1923 in Blackpool, where he left school with no qualifications at 14 to begin an engineering apprenticeship in a local garage. He worked there for some years before in 1946 starting up his own car repair and light engineering business, Trevcars, in a former wheelwright’s premises in another part of Blackpool. The following year he built his first car, which had a two-seat cockpit on an Alvis Firebird chassis.

For his next venture, TVR Engineering, which took its name from his own — TreVoR — he was joined by Jack Pickard. The pair were determined to build their own line of sports cars, their first attempt, TVR1, appearing in 1949. This featured an alloy two-seater body built on a multitubular steel chassis. The front suspension used springs which, famously, had had their first life in the bumper of a Brighton fairground dodgem car. It was sold for £325. Its successor, TVR2, is still in existence in mint condition, and is owned by a TVR Car Club member in Yorkshire.

In between producing their cars the TVR partners kept themselves going by repairing fairground machinery. The impetus to the business came in the mid-1950s when an American asked them to produce a chassis for sports car racing in the US. For this Wilkinson designed what was to become the traditional underpinning of a tubular steel backbone chassis.

The result, unveiled in 1959, was the TVR Mk1, later to be familiar on Britain’s roads as the Grantura. Its eclectic genesis — a choice of Ford, Coventry Climax and BMC MG engine; a Ford Consul/Zephyr windscreen; and VW Beetle suspension parts — was quintessentially TVR. Indeed, its wedge-shaped front end seemed not to have enough room under the bonnet to accommodate an engine. But it provided a rackety vehicle to delight the nascent ambitions of amateur racers who could not afford posh wheels.

With TVR’s finances always problematical, Wilkinson gave up running the company in April 1962, and was on the sidelines when the company made its not terribly successful debut in the Le Mans 24-hour race in June that year. The TVR Cars entry, a Grantura driven by Peter Bolton and Ninian Sanderson, completed only three

laps before its 1.6 litre BMC engine expired.

The company was subsequently to prosper under other ownership, with new models becoming popular with a rising generation of affluent City drivers. Having sold it, Wilkinson set up an engineering company with Pickard specialising in glass fibre. He subsequently retired to Minorca where he enjoyed sailing his small yacht, but keeping an interest in the TVR Car Club of which he was patron.

He was unmarried.

Trevor Wilkinson, motor engineer, was born on May 14, 1923. He died on June 6, 2008, aged 85