Currently reading: Motorsport outfit TWR's name revived for bespoke sports car maker

Legendary firm, known for creating some of Britain's best-known racers, vows to build "analogue" performance cars

The son of famed racing and automotive engineer Tom Walkinshaw has set up a new TWR firm that is intended to serve as a “world-class constructor of bespoke high-performance automobiles”.

Launched in Newbury, Berkshire by Fergus Walkinshaw, son of Tom, the new company will aim to channel the spirit, drive and ethos of the original Oxfordshire-based Tom Walkinshaw Racing company.

It's already working on a new project, previewed below, and has promised to reveal details soon. 

According to Walkinshaw, projects from the new TWR will “preserve and protect the analogue driving experience in a world where modern performance cars are governed by electronic systems”.

He also plans to “work with leading brands to help maximise the potential of their own products”. 

Darkened teaser of TWR's first car

Walkinshaw said he has already assembled a highly skilled technical team, scouring the performance and motorsport engineering businesses to find the right people, some of whom worked for TWR in its previous incarnation.

He claims “great pride” in bringing back the traditions and objectives espoused by his father. “Ever since the original TWR business closed its doors, I longed to find a way to continue the family legacy,” he said.

Walkinshaw has been associated with motorsport for more than a decade and has been building his new TWR company since 2020 with a business partner, John Kane.

The objective is “to build an engineering company that will make cars, rather than a car maker that does engineering", he said. 

"There’s a big difference. We aim to build truly impressive and innovative automobiles, unconstrained by the rulebooks and the styling demands of OEMs.”

The original TWR business, founded in Kidlington in 1975, scored impressive successes in the road and racing business before folding in 2002 after what turned out to be an ill-advised association with the Arrows Formula 1 team.

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Walkinshaw himself died in 2010 at 64 after a cancer battle. 

On the racing side, TWR became famous for early successful competition forays with the Mazda RX-7, Jaguar XJ-S, Holden Commodore (in Australia) and Volvo 850 estate, perhaps the most iconic BTCC racer ever.

TWR engineering teams brought the Aston Martin DB7, Volvo C70 and Renault Clio V6 road cars to life, too. 

Established in new headquarters at Leafield, the company also began tackling confidential engineering and design projects for a wide variety of clients.

Many famous designers and engineers built their careers through TWR projects, including Roger Silman, Ross Brawn, Tony Southgate and Ian Callum.  

Probably TWR’s biggest claim to fame were its Jaguar links. Walkinshaw’s team built a family of Group C sports racing cars in the later 1980s that won many WSCC events, including the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1988 and 1990.

A Jaguar Sport division was established in 1988 to produce modified versions of various Jaguar models, but its pinnacle was probably its XJR-15 and XJ220 supercars, built in the early 1990s at a new factory at Bloxham, Oxfordshire. 

The new TWR business is has no connection with the thriving Melbourne-based Walkinshaw Group run by Tom’s eldest son, Ryan, which grew out of Walkinshaw’s Holden Special Vehicles operation. Ryan Walkinshaw has since built a business employing 1500 people that builds a wide range of specialist vehicles including models for five global OEMs.

Steve Cropley

Steve Cropley Autocar
Title: Editor-in-chief

Steve Cropley is the oldest of Autocar’s editorial team, or the most experienced if you want to be polite about it. He joined over 30 years ago, and has driven many cars and interviewed many people in half a century in the business. 

Cropley, who regards himself as the magazine’s “long stop”, has seen many changes since Autocar was a print-only affair, but claims that in such a fast moving environment he has little appetite for looking back. 

He has been surprised and delighted by the generous reception afforded the My Week In Cars podcast he makes with long suffering colleague Matt Prior, and calls it the most enjoyable part of his working week.

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TStag 23 October 2023

Didn't TWR do the design work for the Phoenix 4's next mid sized Rover, only for TWR to go but with £100m worth of development work that Rover couldn't access? Arguably the nail in the Rover cofin?