TVR in the USA, an M135i replacement for £40k

... and John's last episode as co-host<br />

By Cam Tait / Tuesday, 18 November 2025 / Loading comments

Some sad news to kick off today’s episode of The Gassing Station podcast. Co-host John Howell is moving on to pastures new, wooed by a magazine that’s promised him more seat time in cars and considerably less talking in small, stuffy broom cupboards masquerading as podcast studios. We’ll miss his humour and endless stories immensely, but there’s still an hour’s worth of nonsense to get through before he hands in his gun and badge.

Our first port of call is the new TVR showroom that’s opening in the USA. No, it’s not for the ‘new’ TVR, which recently announced a merger with a company called Charge Holdings in the hope of finally bringing the Griffith to market, but it’s instead aimed at importing pristine examples of models that already exist with a little help from Oxfordshire-based specialist Str8six. Now, British cars have never gone down especially well in the States, but something as bonkers as a Cerbera, Sagaris or Tuscan with large displacement six and eight-cylinder engines seem like the perfect fit for American ‘gear heads’. Does make you wonder, though, whether it’ll drive up prices of the cars here, so if you’ve got a hankering for Blackpool’s finest, you’d better get a move on.

Especially if you’ve got £40k to play with like GTFCAlex does. They’re after a replacement for their 2022 BMW M135i, so John and I went digging through the classifieds to offer up some suggestions. With practicality not all that important, given there’s already an SUV in the family, we went solely for cars that go big on fun factor. John put forward this E92 BMW M3 Competition for £32,980 which, I’ll admit, fits the brief to a tee. Mine, however, was a bit more out there: this Noble M12 GTO-3R. It’s a bit over budget at £40,550 and won’t be anywhere near as refined as the M3, but it’ll be hugely rewarding to drive. Of course, you can put your own suggestions forward in the topic here.

Seeing as it’s John’s last episode, I thought I’d hand him to floor to round things off. He talks about some his favourite drives, the time he wrote that punchy BMW XM review, and how he almost got the podcast cancelled before it even aired. We’ll announce our new co-host next week, but for now, pop the kettle on, pour a coffee or tea and tune in to a slightly bitter sweet episode of The Gassing Station.

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