RE: 250 orders for new TVR

RE: 250 orders for new TVR

Author
Discussion

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 4th September 2015
quotequote all
DonkeyApple said:
Geoffrey Marsh has run ground effect Astons for a couple of decades and people like Malcolm Hamilton have applied aero to their cars on the tiniest of budgets.

^^^^ Road cars??? (i suspect race car.......) (HINT: the "plank" on F1 cars is just 10mm thick, but acts to pretty much remove "ground effect". Go outside, stick a 10mm thick plank under your road car (which will need to have at a minimum 100mm clearance, and see if you can feel the difference. Not for nothing does the MAL P1 have an active high adjust system for "race mode".

That fact that people at TVR are spouting about things like Ground Effect, without clearly knowing anything about it, how you harness it, and why it's a REALLY bad idea for a road car, doesn't fill me with confidence. What I want to hear is "Comfortable, usable cockpit, easy ingress/egress, low wind noise, optimised driving position, wide spread of power, progressive chassis balance, finely optimised steering feedback and weighting" etc etc. I, and i suspect 99% of TVR eventual customers, won't care about "Ground effect", but they will care if the car is not spectacular to both look at and drive. Get those wrong, and it's a dodo.............

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 4th September 2015
quotequote all
DonkeyApple said:
skyrover said:
A factory built Ultima costs around £67,000

This is in the region what I would expect of the TVR
That would suggest the TVR will need to be well north of that figure unless Ultima are taking the piss?

Those extra refinements that TVR needs over the Ultima imply a lot more man hours and development cost etc.
This^^^ An Ultima is really a race car with a number plate. It's a massive engine in some scaffolding. Spectacularly fast (in the right hands) but nothing at all what a modern TVR should, imo, be about, and nothing at all what it needs to be about to sell more than 5.......

Zippee

13,438 posts

233 months

Friday 4th September 2015
quotequote all
skyrover said:
A factory built Ultima costs around £67,000

This is in the region what I would expect of the TVR
It's a really difficult one, on the one hand to sell they need to be pitched around 60-80k, any less and many corners are likely to be cut, any more and you're into a different league of competition IMHO and a much lower customer base.
I really do wish the company well (though I still don't see it as TVR in anything but name - just my opinion though) and if the car proves itself then who knows, in a couple of years I may even buy one. I just can't get excited when I haven't yet seen anything barr a magazines take on what it will be like.
For me, I think I'll be doing the same as another TVR owner has already done and place a letter of intent and then deposit on the Alfa 6C instead.

I really hope it all works out well and that the people who've placed deposits see it all not only come to fruition, but also see the nuts of a car come off the production line.

DonkeyApple

54,919 posts

168 months

Friday 4th September 2015
quotequote all
Max_Torque said:
DonkeyApple said:
Geoffrey Marsh has run ground effect Astons for a couple of decades and people like Malcolm Hamilton have applied aero to their cars on the tiniest of budgets.

^^^^ Road cars??? (i suspect race car.......) (HINT: the "plank" on F1 cars is just 10mm thick, but acts to pretty much remove "ground effect". Go outside, stick a 10mm thick plank under your road car (which will need to have at a minimum 100mm clearance, and see if you can feel the difference. Not for nothing does the MAL P1 have an active high adjust system for "race mode".

That fact that people at TVR are spouting about things like Ground Effect, without clearly knowing anything about it, how you harness it, and why it's a REALLY bad idea for a road car, doesn't fill me with confidence. What I want to hear is "Comfortable, usable cockpit, easy ingress/egress, low wind noise, optimised driving position, wide spread of power, progressive chassis balance, finely optimised steering feedback and weighting" etc etc. I, and i suspect 99% of TVR eventual customers, won't care about "Ground effect", but they will care if the car is not spectacular to both look at and drive. Get those wrong, and it's a dodo.............
I agree entirely with your second part. I would even refine it down to just looks. If you take the Evora, it is an amazing car and cheap for £70k but it'll never sell in numbers because of its <£50k looks. Outside of the Minicab engine in the boot it's hard to fault it as a low volume car. It's a stonker but they would sell very many more if it looked like the owner could pay the bill for everyone inside when it was parked outside.

Right or wrong, that's the world we live in. Using debt to rent items that make you look hugely succesful to strangers and if you want to attract more than just diehard brand fans then you must pander to that metric.

Re the first part, ground effect, aren't all these road cars with crappy diffusers or flat floors playing the same game? It's all marketing. What I meant to imply in my earlier comment is that blokes in sheds are applying the basics of aero and ground effect so the basics of it isn't true rocket science. As TVRs were always a nightmare at high speeds doesn't it make sense from a marketing perspective to have some hyperbole around the new product? Especially as the real Hypercars and top end sports cars of today all make much of their aero etc?


Edited by DonkeyApple on Friday 4th September 09:53

skyrover

12,668 posts

203 months

Friday 4th September 2015
quotequote all
DonkeyApple said:
skyrover said:
A factory built Ultima costs around £67,000

This is in the region what I would expect of the TVR
That would suggest the TVR will need to be well north of that figure unless Ultima are taking the piss?

Those extra refinements that TVR needs over the Ultima imply a lot more man hours and development cost etc.
I do find this interesting... perhaps due to Ultimas lower overall sales?

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/ultima-...

leerdam23

606 posts

260 months

Friday 4th September 2015
quotequote all
Fairly sure GM has designed an aero car before, no??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Murray

Yep, I'm not worried.

Edited by leerdam23 on Friday 4th September 12:57

DonkeyApple

54,919 posts

168 months

Friday 4th September 2015
quotequote all
skyrover said:
DonkeyApple said:
skyrover said:
A factory built Ultima costs around £67,000

This is in the region what I would expect of the TVR
That would suggest the TVR will need to be well north of that figure unless Ultima are taking the piss?

Those extra refinements that TVR needs over the Ultima imply a lot more man hours and development cost etc.
I do find this interesting... perhaps due to Ultimas lower overall sales?

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/ultima-...
That's a possibility. I don't know how many they sell a year but never thought it was that many?

sealtt

3,091 posts

157 months

Friday 4th September 2015
quotequote all
DonkeyApple said:
Please stop. The 2010 Eva didn't make it into production because Morgan didn't have the money. As one of the people who placed a deposit for one I seem to recall following it rather closely.

Due to the lack of funds they invested in the US license for the 3 wheeler to bring in some easy, low end revenues and they also chose to take the regional development grant for electric vehicles.

They did not and sadly still do not have the money for the Eva. CM being removed was also one of the plans for cutting costs and stopping a large amount of the crazy expenditure. The fact that CM hasn't found a normal job since 2013 does tend to suggest why the Board felt he was better as a figurehead and not actually involved in doing anything important.

I've always hankered after a Morgan since a child and hearing stories from my grandfather about how HFS would race his uncle up their driveway. My great uncle's Bugatti always won apparently. So the failure to built the Eva was a huge disappointment. But it's also why I kept with TVR.
I can imagine a project like the Eva being incredibly expensive and pretty unrealistic for a micro-brand like Morgan to be able to pull off.

But what an incredible design, I'd even approve of selling the design to Bentley or such like, just for the pleasure of seeing them in real life on the road. Sure to brighten up your day!

joncon

1,446 posts

222 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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[redacted]

andy43

9,546 posts

253 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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[redacted]

Roo

11,503 posts

206 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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And they were losing money on them at that price.

Tvr Power

1,076 posts

205 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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[redacted]

DonkeyApple

54,919 posts

168 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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Tvr Power said:
First Production Sag which i proudly purchased from Tvr in 2004 Cost me 57k

New Tvr in 2018 at least 90k minimum and there be no profit at that

Dom
Unless this iStream process has revolutionary low costs I think you're spot on. If they are succesful then I can see prices clearing £100k as soon as they can do so.

Although, one of the reasons TVR wasn't making money in the end was the ludicrous numbers of staff they had. And when you learn from Trevor that it took two chaps over a day to get a pair of doors to fit a shell then it seems that modern manufacturing techniques could at least offer some huge savings over the costs ten years ago.

One huge upside to new £100k Tivs is that they will act as the halo to bring up older TVR values and start getting even more money poured into those.

I'm looking forward to EType-esque investment weiners starting to argue over 'originality' and matching numbers while claiming to be leading authorities on the subject. biggrin

ORD

18,086 posts

126 months

Friday 4th September 2015
quotequote all
I think it would be suicidal to come to market at £90k. I am not saying it's not a realistic break-even price. It may well be.

But it's not a price point that TVR can afford to hit until it has won some acclaim.

£75k is a realistic target in terms of a price that the press and public won't choke on.

HarryW

15,150 posts

268 months

Friday 4th September 2015
quotequote all
Inflation since 2004 has only been high 30's% and in real terms cars have come down in price since the mid noughties. Also car prices effectively have been subject to lower increases than the compound inflation.
TVR themselves have put a price bracket of £55-75k for a 2017 car. I do not understand the preoccupation of talking it up from there tbh. They are not mugs, the Istream process is reckoned to save around 80% in start up production costs. I want to be one of the first buyers of one of these, I am not poor, in the top 2% of earners, but as a 'blue collar' buyer I will buckle if it comes in outside or near the top end of the predicted price point. If I do then I do not suppose I'll be the only one, in which case TVR will be doomed to fail.

Housey

2,076 posts

226 months

Friday 4th September 2015
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Little change from 100K I suspect

RoverP6B

4,338 posts

127 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
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dvs_dave said:
So anyone that's near Gordon Murray's place
That'll be me then, he's in Shalford and I'm in the neighbouring village (Chilworth) several times a week, often head through Shalford and even stop there sometimes.

As for price - the new TVR needs to be in the middle of the 100k-150k bracket, I suspect, putting it up against the likes of 911 Turbo, V12 Vantage, 570S etc. They might just make a profit on it then. 75k is going to require a lot of cut corners (not just a Ford crate motor) and it'll go the way of the Jensen S-V8 and Invicta S1.

DonkeyApple

54,919 posts

168 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
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If any car is as utterly hideous as an Invecta or that absolute abomination of a Jensen then it will fail. Looks will be important and making it look like some council estate kit car for mentalists has rarely been a recipe for tremendous success.


skyrover

12,668 posts

203 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
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RoverP6B said:
75k is going to require a lot of cut corners (not just a Ford crate motor).
The ford crate motor is a wise choice, not a cut corner at all.

andy43

9,546 posts

253 months

Saturday 5th September 2015
quotequote all
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Agreed plus one smile
One plus is they aren't aiming to sell to the Far East - I suspect the Chinese/eastern market is the reason most modern stuff looks like they've ram raided a Christmas pop up shop. Gopping donkey made me laugh smile
No plastic chrome please. Led idiot lights only to get through the the EU rubbish please. Simple, smooth and classy.