Discussion
350Matt said:
So if the new car managed to weigh the same (ish ) as the old (1000 to 1100kg) but had a 'mere' 450Bhp would that do us.....
surely that enough for something with a basic chassis?
I would guess that that sort of weight target is impossible. By the time you've made the car larger than the old ones so as to suit modern requirements, added some safety kit and also beefed up the drivetrain to take that extra power then I think you have to safely assume a figure at least where the Evora is. surely that enough for something with a basic chassis?
And then to get it lighter requires the kind of money that then means it's probably too expensive?
The Typhon is quite a bit longer and wider than standard Tivs but is the same weight. It cost TVR an awful lot of money to achieve that. It does show that it can be done but the last price for the Typhon was £135k a decade ago and it wasn't bought then.
Tech has moved on and shells can probably be made cheaper and better overseas, as can chassis but I think if the new TVR is the same size as the old ones then it may create hurdles for the price expectations among new buyers. I would think they would be larger and heavier?
DonkeyApple said:
I think if the new TVR is the same size as the old ones then it may create hurdles for the price expectations among new buyers. I would think they would be larger and heavier?
Why? I think the whole point of being a very low volume manufacturer would be that you can build that 'Cobra-type' car that the Jaguars and Astons of this world cannot due to regulations and overseas/nouveau riche market expectations. If it were my money I would want to differentiat from that set as clearly as possible and if my 6'2.5" frame has ample space in an old-school TVR (except T350/Sag which are on the 'cosy' side...) with oodles of boot space, why on Earth would you want to make it bigger?Whilst perusing the 'How Many Left' website I notice that 3 'new' Griffith's were registered in 2014. ( https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/tvr_griffith... ). Factory test mules??
900T-R said:
DonkeyApple said:
I think if the new TVR is the same size as the old ones then it may create hurdles for the price expectations among new buyers. I would think they would be larger and heavier?
Why? I think the whole point of being a very low volume manufacturer would be that you can build that 'Cobra-type' car that the Jaguars and Astons of this world cannot due to regulations and overseas/nouveau riche market expectations. If it were my money I would want to differentiat from that set as clearly as possible and if my 6'2.5" frame has ample space in an old-school TVR (except T350/Sag which are on the 'cosy' side...) with oodles of boot space, why on Earth would you want to make it bigger?Recent Tivs are now very small cars compared to their modern contemporaries.
I very much suspect that if you produced something as small as a Griff today then you would be creating automatic pricing expectations that would put you in the back foot.
Plus, it would likely have negative performance connotations in the inevitable benchmarking against modern equivalents.
Today's cars are very much wider and longer than they were just 10 years ago, let alone 20.
simonwedge said:
Whilst perusing the 'How Many Left' website I notice that 3 'new' Griffith's were registered in 2014. ( https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/tvr_griffith... ). Factory test mules??
Why do people bother looking at that web site? 
RichB said:
simonwedge said:
Whilst perusing the 'How Many Left' website I notice that 3 'new' Griffith's were registered in 2014. ( https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/tvr_griffith... ). Factory test mules??
Why do people bother looking at that web site? simonwedge said:
RichB said:
simonwedge said:
Whilst perusing the 'How Many Left' website I notice that 3 'new' Griffith's were registered in 2014. ( https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/tvr_griffith... ). Factory test mules??
Why do people bother looking at that web site? 
DonkeyApple said:
simonwedge said:
RichB said:
simonwedge said:
Whilst perusing the 'How Many Left' website I notice that 3 'new' Griffith's were registered in 2014. ( https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/tvr_griffith... ). Factory test mules??
Why do people bother looking at that web site? 
Wacky Racer said:
DonkeyApple said:
simonwedge said:
RichB said:
simonwedge said:
Whilst perusing the 'How Many Left' website I notice that 3 'new' Griffith's were registered in 2014. ( https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/tvr_griffith... ). Factory test mules??
Why do people bother looking at that web site? simonwedge said:
RichB said:
simonwedge said:
Whilst perusing the 'How Many Left' website I notice that 3 'new' Griffith's were registered in 2014. ( https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/tvr_griffith... ). Factory test mules??
Why do people bother looking at that web site? 
Milky400 said:
RichB said:
hy do people bother looking at that web site?
Why not?........900T-R said:
DonkeyApple said:
Because if they have any sense they want to sell to non enthusiasts.
Eh?? To compete against the mainstream would be suicidal. They don't have to either, if they have any sense they will plan to build a couple hundred cars as an upper limit.And I agree, a couple of hundred cars would be rather superb. But at what price? The closer they are to £100k the more vital the non enthusiast is to success. Down at the £30-£40k level you could probably shift that volume just to enthusiasts. Having said that, it's not as if Ginetta are selling many cars. In fact, they've sold none of their £80k cars and struggled to flog old stock and the baby one is pretty crude and catagorically only for enthusiasts and they aren't flying off the shelf.
To sell a couple of hundred a year they need broad appeal and the one thing the market tells us all day long is that no one forks out strong money for small sports cars. Small is cheap. It's going to need a very similar footprint to things like SLKs and Boxsters, not MX5s or Elise's etc.
FlipFlopGriff said:
13 Griffs since 2005? Are these European or US cars being registered in the UK, either 60's or 90/00's Griffs? FFG
As Adrian said it's probably the 'original' Griffs; AIUI it's the perversion of historic racing whereby a new car is built roughly following the design of the original but with uprated engine, suspension etc. Look how many TVRs compete at the historic races at Spa. It's getting hard to find a historic race where a historic car is competitive now.DonkeyApple said:
It's not about competing against the mainstream. It's about selling new cars. What separated TVR sales from all the other low volume manufacturers from the 90s on was that non enthusiasts were buying the cars. I doubt anyone is expecting those volumes again but why specifically build a car that only an enthusiast would buy? Seems slightly suicidal not to plan for success?
Because then the market expects seamlessly shifting DCT transmissions, three-stage ESP to save the driver's bacon while still being able to pretend they're a racing driver, state of the art in-car communication and connectivity (see how Aston and Lotus' systems are always being lambasted in reviews while for the non-tech oriented population they're probably perfectly adequate) - everything that's exceedingly expensive and difficult to engineer into a low volume product, will do nothing to endear their product to their 'core' customer but muddle the waters with regards to the proposition the brand makes?Successful marketing is as much defining for whom your product is not, as anything else. If Jaguar makes 1.7 ton 'compact' two seater sports cars, it's easy to see where's an opportunity for the brand to differentiate itself. If only 0.1% of the people on here who agree performance cars have grown too fat and overblown, buy a TVR, the order books will be full for some time to come.
DonkeyApple said:
To sell a couple of hundred a year they need
To sell 200 cars a year and survive history shows us probably is not possible; you either need to be bigger or smaller. Companies like Atom survive on tiny numbers. TVR generally produced about 600 - 800 cars a year, about the same as Morgan. TVR's biggest problems in their last two or three years were the S6 fallout and the low numbers sold meaning that the overheads were spread over fewer and fewer cars leading to losses despite ever increasing prices.900T-R said:
DonkeyApple said:
Because if they have any sense they want to sell to non enthusiasts.
Eh?? To compete against the mainstream would be suicidal. They don't have to either, if they have any sense they will plan to build a couple hundred cars as an upper limit.Conversely, the UK is one of the largest and most important markets in the world for Porsche's sports cars.
No one in the UK wants a small, expensive, British sportscar. Outside of the anomalous blip of TVR sales to Baby Boomers and IT Consultants at the turn of the century this has been the case for a rather long time.
To sell in the UK you need to either target the cash rich over 55s or the cash rich, under 40s. The former need the car to be fat and heavy to carry all the life support systems old people need like neck and pile warmers. While the latter needs to be big as new and easy money always knows that bigger is better.
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