RE: New TVR - the car
Discussion
DonkeyApple said:
unrepentant said:
Ozzie Osmond said:
unrepentant said:
Yes, but are you ready to stroke a check for 80 grand for one? Because unless enough people are it's all hypothetical.
That's the bottom line. No point having a handful of people clamouring for the first few cars if that's all they ever sell.... fatbutt said:
No AC as it requires a relatively large compressor, tanks and an additional radiator. This robs the engine bay of space and 10% or thereabouts of engine power when active. As has been noted elsewhere, bad AC is also something that people endlessly complain about so don't add it. Open a window.
Have you ever been stuck in traffic in a TVR mid-summer? The heat soak from the transmission is phenomenal - opening a window does nothing. The heat was enough to melt the glue holding the change-up lights panel in my old Tuscan. A/C is an absolute must unless you're after a mobile sauna.judas said:
fatbutt said:
No AC as it requires a relatively large compressor, tanks and an additional radiator. This robs the engine bay of space and 10% or thereabouts of engine power when active. As has been noted elsewhere, bad AC is also something that people endlessly complain about so don't add it. Open a window.
Have you ever been stuck in traffic in a TVR mid-summer? The heat soak from the transmission is phenomenal - opening a window does nothing. The heat was enough to melt the glue holding the change-up lights panel in my old Tuscan. A/C is an absolute must unless you're after a mobile sauna.
judas said:
Have you ever been stuck in traffic in a TVR mid-summer? The heat soak from the transmission is phenomenal - opening a window does nothing. The heat was enough to melt the glue holding the change-up lights panel in my old Tuscan. A/C is an absolute must unless you're after a mobile sauna.
Yup, this. My A/C broke on the way Le Mans last year, it was utterly horrendous, over 50 degrees in the cabin. PhillipM said:
If your A/C is sapping 10% of your 400-500bhp car when active then I suggest that it's broken and the engine is busy mashing the pump pistons into the swash plate.
Indeed. This "10%" figure was something coined as an average when most people drove wheezy little cars with 90bhp engines.Power to drive a typical car A/C system at full pelt is about the same regardless of engine size - the power consumed is consumed by the compressor. The compressor size and power requirement is a function of how much cooling duty is required for the car cabin. The a/c compressor on a Mercedes C180 will absorb pretty much the same amount of power as that on a C63 AMG.
The bigger / more powerful the engine, the less effect air conditioning has on it. Same goes for fuel consumption too. A/C has the worst impact on the weakest engines. The most powerful engines hardly notice it's there.
DonkeyApple said:
chrispj said:
Needs single zone climate control IMO, this is the only thing that irritates me about my 2011 Evora - the 'guess what point on the hot/cold dial' game to try and get a consistently good temperature in hot weather. This then highlights the awkward position of the controls, whereas with climate control I'd set it once and then never touch it again and not be bothered by it. Les said it won't have a bespoke infotainment system so a good double DIN touchscreen, decently faired in, Xenons/LEDs (not adaptive as the big manufacturers can't get them not to dazzle other road users so what hope would TVR have!) and cruise control and that's all it needs for me. As few buttons on the steering wheel as possible, keep it simple, I hate the latest Porsche/BMW/ and virtually everyone else's offerings with buttons and dials with a passion!
Absolutely, as few buttons as possible and some nice, bespoke switchgear dials/buttons etc. Something that was very subtle but superb about the PW TVRs was the tactile nature of the cabin functions. Metal door handles (god how I hate the plastic tat expensive cars fob you off with today) and lovely, turned knobs instead of ghastly little buttons from an 80s Grundig stereo.unrepentant said:
DonkeyApple said:
unrepentant said:
Ozzie Osmond said:
unrepentant said:
Yes, but are you ready to stroke a check for 80 grand for one? Because unless enough people are it's all hypothetical.
That's the bottom line. No point having a handful of people clamouring for the first few cars if that's all they ever sell.... I can see that you are adamant that the only way a car company can exist is to churn out a million white 4-pot diesels every month.
Old TVR's sales volume was capped by the limits they needed to stay below in order to avoid all the type approval stuff. This applies to new TVR also. DA has pointed out the gross inefficiencies in old TVR's finances. In order to cure that problem, TVR's sales volume would have needed to be far in excess of what the regulations would have allowed them to sell.
New TVR wants to sell exciting cars. That means staying below 2000 units per annum. Development costs go through the roof above this ceiling. Your view that only sales volume can be the answer would make new TVR a total non-starter. No offence intended, but Les Edgar has better business credentials than you do. The only way new TVR can be sustainable is by minimising cost, NOT, as you assert, by just furiously selling huge numbers of generic cars to generic people. That market is already saturated and the big car manufacturers, having lots of shareholders mostly, are profit driven. Costs will already be as low as they can get them for mass-production facilities. No new company will compete with that, and TVR aren't trying to.
Sway said:
To summarise, and apologies for distilling great conversation into a relatively banal statement but 'turnover is vanity and profit is sanity'...
That's not the issue I was making though. I was at the TVR factory several times in 2005 and they had a lot of cars lying around and there were a lot there when it closed. What they didn't seem to have were buyers. Nobody is suggesting that TVR need large volumes but they need some! jamieduff1981 said:
New TVR wants to sell exciting cars. That means staying below 2000 units per annum.
2000 cars per year. 
Sorry I didn't read your post and just saw that.
jamieduff1981 said:
Old TVR's sales volume was capped by the limits they needed to stay below in order to avoid all the type approval stuff.
You seriously think that was an issue? Maybe at the Chim / Griff peak but by 2003 onwards? Not a chance. They only sold 150 odd Saggy's in total and T2 sales were slow, Tamora's and T350's pretty non existent.unrepentant said:
Sway said:
To summarise, and apologies for distilling great conversation into a relatively banal statement but 'turnover is vanity and profit is sanity'...
That's not the issue I was making though. I was at the TVR factory several times in 2005 and they had a lot of cars lying around and there were a lot there when it closed. What they didn't seem to have were buyers. Nobody is suggesting that TVR need large volumes but they need some! 
Seriously, look at the accounts, they were still selling cars right up to the end. But take a look at the wage bill!!!! It was enormous. The company had been stripped of it's core assets was running some big liabilities and despite having some quite good revenues the wage bill was shocking and most of the workers were being paid to do nothing. The company didn't have enough cash or reserves to make them redundant and that was why in the end NS tried to fold it and re-open so as to walk away from that liability.
This new entity will be much more reliant on modern Western building techniques which utilise a fraction of the labour and so will have much lower operating costs than old TVR and most importantly, the flexibility to handle the horrors of very variable customer demand. You can easily imagine that key months see more orders than others and for low volume manufacturers you either operate a waiting list like Morgan or run a large pool of surplus labour that can be called into action for those occasions like TVR did. The latter being horrifically inefficient.
unrepentant said:
I'll bow to your superior knowledge DA but I still think your specs are rose tinted.
I'd be inclined to agree. 
For example, a max figure of 2000 units per annum was mentioned in this thread or another re how many cars they can build under the regs but I can't envisage them getting to anywhere near that number, even with overseas sales. I reckon they need to be able to make this viable on a tenth of that and I just hope that this iStream process allows for such a low volume to be viable as it definitely couldn't ever be if they were being built in the traditional low volume manner.
RichB said:
judas said:
fatbutt said:
No AC as it requires a relatively large compressor, tanks and an additional radiator. This robs the engine bay of space and 10% or thereabouts of engine power when active. As has been noted elsewhere, bad AC is also something that people endlessly complain about so don't add it. Open a window.
Have you ever been stuck in traffic in a TVR mid-summer? The heat soak from the transmission is phenomenal - opening a window does nothing. The heat was enough to melt the glue holding the change-up lights panel in my old Tuscan. A/C is an absolute must unless you're after a mobile sauna.judas said:
RichB said:
judas said:
fatbutt said:
No AC as it requires a relatively large compressor, tanks and an additional radiator. This robs the engine bay of space and 10% or thereabouts of engine power when active. As has been noted elsewhere, bad AC is also something that people endlessly complain about so don't add it. Open a window.
Have you ever been stuck in traffic in a TVR mid-summer? The heat soak from the transmission is phenomenal - opening a window does nothing. The heat was enough to melt the glue holding the change-up lights panel in my old Tuscan. A/C is an absolute must unless you're after a mobile sauna.As for the 10% bit; watch any consumer programme that does a 0 - 60 test. First thing they do is turn the AC off.
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