The company was established in 1974 by Australian Tim Schenken and New Zealander Howden Ganley. Both men had recent Formula One experience and brought credibility to the nascent constructor. The name Tiga was formed from the first two letters of Tim and Ganley.
Howden Ganley had arrived in England in 1961 with just $50 in his pocket, working initially as a mechanic at a racing school. After years of persistence he competed in F5000, finished runner-up to Peter Gethin with a private McLaren M10B, and secured a place at BRM for 1971. He drove for BRM in 1971 and 1972, scored points at Monza and Watkins Glen, and shared a Matra with Cevert to finish second at Le Mans in 1972. He raced for Frank Williams in 1973 before joining March for the early rounds of 1974. A suspension failure in practice at the German Grand Prix left Ganley with serious foot and ankle injuries that ended his Grand Prix career. Tim Schenken shared a comparable pedigree, and together the two channelled their experience into building customer racing cars rather than pursuing works programmes.
Tiga's first project was a Formula Ford 1600 car. To accelerate production and avoid building all tooling from scratch, the company acquired an existing FF1600 constructor, MRE. Ganley designed a car around the acquired bodywork. The debut was immediately successful: at Mallory Park, David Lang — competing on a scholarship from the Winfield Racing School — took pole position, won his heat, won the final, and set the fastest lap. In their inaugural year Tiga sold 21 FF1600 cars. The company subsequently relocated to the former Fittipaldi headquarters near Reading to accommodate growth.
In 1977, Tiga was commissioned to build a Sports 2000 car based on an existing design, resulting in the Tiga SC77 — the first in a long and successful series of Sports 2000 machinery.
Tiga constructed cars for a wide spectrum of motorsport: Formula Ford, Formula Ford 2000, Formula Atlantic and Pacific, Thundersports, Can-Am, Sports 2000, Formula K, IMSA, and Group C. The company's greatest commercial and sporting success came in Sports 2000, where Tiga chassis dominated from the late 1970s into the early 1980s.
Championship victories for Tiga-built cars included: four British Sports 2000 titles (1979–1982), three European Sports 2000 titles (1983–1985), one SCCA US National Championship (1980), and two Australian Drivers' Championships. At the international endurance level, Tiga machinery recorded class wins at both Le Mans and Daytona. The Daytona 24 Hours Camel Light class was won in 1987 and 1988.
In 1985, Spice Engineering used a Spice-Tiga GC85 Ford to win the Group C2 Teams title in the World Endurance Championship. Tiga also won the 1988 Camel Lights Championship for Manufacturers in the North American IMSA GT Championship. Almost 400 chassis were built and sold across the company's active period.
After selling over 400 chassis across fifteen years of production, Tiga Race Cars folded in 1989. The company and its name rights were later purchased from Mike Taylor by racing driver and businessman Mike Newton in 2012. Newton's stated intention was to supply spare parts and restoration services for surviving historic Tiga cars and to develop new competition projects. Under the relaunched banner, Tiga developed the CN012 — a Speed Euroseries CN car — for the 2012 season.
In 2013 the revived company acquired the intellectual property rights and all existing tooling and data for the Embassy Racing WF01 LMP2 sportscar. The car's original Zytek V8 engine was replaced with a Judd Power HK unit, and Tiga intended to offer it to customers for the 2014 LMP2 season under the revised cost-cap regulations of that class. The car did not ultimately race under the Tiga name.
Tiga Race Cars represents a distinct strand of British motorsport engineering: small-team constructors that sustained customer racing through reliable, affordable, and competitive machinery rather than works ambitions. Their Sports 2000 dominance in particular influenced club and national racing across Europe, North America, and Australia through the early 1980s.