Talk:TVR Griffith 400

Contradicting Facts

This article contains contradicting facts concerning engine, production numbers and production data. I have never seen - all over the WIKIPEDIA (!) - an article that tells you specific facts and in the paragraph underneath it tells that all these facts should be wrong and gives you contradicting facts! Could anybody clean up this article, please? Many thanks in advance. --MartinHansV (talk) 10:23, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed - it's a shame. A classic and rare car deserves a little attention, some jump off points here (retrieved 17-Sep-12) for further research. Might look into it if I get chance. FrankieCola (talk) 22:22, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Where Do I Begin

Folks, there is so much wrong with this article it is difficult to know where to begin. First of all, the title of the article is TVR Griffith 400 and while it gets tiresome repeating myself on every interent venue where somebody heard from somebody else that such and such is the case there is no such car, at least not from that era.

There is the TVR manufactured platform borrowed from the Grantura model which Jack Griffith bought and modified to create his own Griffith 200 and 400 models (the correct name for the cars btw) but those cars were never marketed, legally labeled, or sold as a TVR anything. Think about that for a second, the title of the article itself is wrong! You just can't get much more useless than that.

You have the same problem over on the Shelby Cobra article. What's the title? AC Cobra. Again, there was never legally a car called the AC Cobra. Even the COX and COB models sold by Auto Carrier in Europe and Britain and produced alongside actual Shelby Cobras in the 60's weren't technically marketed or labeled as Cobra's, instead they wore names like 289 Supersports.

There is indeed an AC Ace based chassis and body underneath every small block Cobra, but the cars were and are Shelby American Cobras and even a court of law recognized that Shelby American was and is the legal manufacturer of record. Instead, we have an incorrect colloquialism used as the title of the article while the actual, legal name of the manufacturer is listed within the article as, believe it, a colloquialism.

And it doesn't just stop at cars, we also saw it in the Baby Browning FN pistol section where the Colt Model 1908 .25 acp was referred to as a licensed copy of that model. Literally, all of that is complete fiction. Browning designed both pistols, and at one point FN did manufacture the same basic pistol as the Colt Model 1908 .25acp, but the Baby Browning wasn't that design! We literally have somebody referring to the wrong pistol altogether and then suggesting a fictitious licensing agreement that existed with neither pistol design on top of that!

There is just too much room for prejudice in these articles and nobody with enough knowledge to know who actually knows what they are talking about and who is just another internet expert or the power to stop it. We literally have a site which claims to be an online encyclopedia spreading falsehoods. That begs the question, what is the point of the site in the first place? The point of an encyclopedia is factual information, if you can't deliver that why bother?

Literally all three of the above mentioned articles need to be rewritten from scratch

Until Wikipedia somehow addresses issues like these the site will remain something less than well respected by those who matter most, the genuinely informed.Syr74 (talk) 20:15, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I suspect I could clarify much of this information. I am "profdeuce" and have been involved with Griffiths since the 60's. The red Griffith 400 picture used here by wikipedia is mine. It is car 400-6-055, which indicates it is car #55 of the 59 Griffith 400's made in 1965/6. It was purchased by me in 1983, and I have owned it ever since. It was originally equipped with a 271 HP Ford 289 engine, a Ford 4-speed "top loader" transmission and had a 3:07 Salisbury differential giving a first gear top speed of 72 mph, and would do 163 mph in 4th. It weighed 2150 pounds when filled with fuel and an optional 96 pound rollbar. My Griffith was also equipped with the optional 1965 dated JA Pearce 15x7 magnesium (magna) alloy wheels that were fitted with spline adapters to allow use of knock-offs.

As noted, the Griffith 400 was based on a TVR Grantura Mk III from England. It has a 16 gauge tube steel frame chassis under the fiberglass body. Grantura (Plastics) was a neighbor of Trevor (TVR) Wilkinson in England. These two neighbors got together in the 1950's to produce and sell early TVR models. In the early 60's TVR was contacted by Jack Griffith in a story similar to the Cobra.

Between 1963-66 Jake Griffith, a NY Ford dealer, bought Grantura's (less drivetrain) from Trevor, shipped them to NY, and installed the 289 engine, transmission, and differentials, and called the marriage a Griffith 200. One hundred ninety-two (192) Griffith 200's were made, followed by 59 Griffith 400's that addressed some of the early Griffith shortcomings. It is easy to tell the two apart. The 200's had an abbreviated rear plexiglas window, while the 400's had a much larger rear plexiglas window. 2601:1C0:6480:1FD0:0:0:0:504 (talk) 22:13, 5 November 2022 (UTC)