Re : TVR appoints new CEO; laments factory issues
Discussion
markcoopers said:
I am not an engineer or a car manufacturing executive, nor do i have a massive insight into the challenges they face. However as notes by others the skills needed to build a car are almost secondary to those needed to Test, develop and ready it, build a factory, market and sell it.
Perhaps TVR should be built under licence by an already set up firm with the skills needed, then branch out when a critical mass has been reached? If Aston or Lotus or Ginetta, or the bus people in Ireland (sorry i should know their name) were able to build it, perhaps we could see this in existence quickly?
I've done a lot of production in my life and much of the comment and advice here is correct. I think the main challenge is that Les and his team really do not have the experience to set up and run a car company. They are enthusiasts at heart - well intentioned and keen, but massively under-financed and trying to do something which, frankly speaking, would be very difficult given 10X the backing and 100X the background.Perhaps TVR should be built under licence by an already set up firm with the skills needed, then branch out when a critical mass has been reached? If Aston or Lotus or Ginetta, or the bus people in Ireland (sorry i should know their name) were able to build it, perhaps we could see this in existence quickly?
There's a very good reason you don't get many start-ups entering at the £80k to £100k range with a road developed car - the numbers just do not stack up. You can either develop a far simpler track car ( such as Ariel, BAC etc ), or a far more expensive higher margin road car ( Pagani, Koenigg etc... ).
To go up against the likes of Porsche is suicide - you have to develop and launch a better product and probably sell it for less, to tempt buyers to switch and that is simply not going to happen in the numbers you need to make the project work. Sorry to sound pessimistic, but it is doomed.
Suspect they are realising this, and hence the reluctance to spend money on the factory and developing the car....
markcoopers said:
Perhaps TVR should be built under licence by an already set up firm with the skills needed, then branch out when a critical mass has been reached?
Lets be fair, a decent racing car outfit, classic restorer or non-competition, specialist vehicle manufacturer could get the dozen or so prototypes up to a standard where they can get approval and basic magazine coverage. As long as the full design and engineering is modelled and drawn, it doesn't take a factory to get up to production ready status for a few initial cars. Maybe just a few good suppliers and one who has some experience in putting out low volume vehicles to bring it all together.
Prodrive, Ricardo, Ginetta, Ariel, Radical, Ultima, Caterham, Westfield?
From March 2018 newsletter.
“It’s time to give you an update on what’s happening in the world of TVR.
There’s quite a lot going on at the moment in a number of different areas, so I've broken this email into a few sections.
Buses – none, and then 2:
You may recall that the Welsh Government recently announced they had acquired the building for TVR's new factory facility in Ebbw Vale just before Christmas. As time was ticking on, we decided to acquire some additional space in order to let us get started in advance of the refurb being complete on the main building. I am happy to say that this has now been achieved - close to the the main facility. We have already begun the move from our Guildford development site to the new unit and to configure the building for pre-production builds, pilot builds etc.”
What happened to the new smaller site?
“It’s time to give you an update on what’s happening in the world of TVR.
There’s quite a lot going on at the moment in a number of different areas, so I've broken this email into a few sections.
Buses – none, and then 2:
You may recall that the Welsh Government recently announced they had acquired the building for TVR's new factory facility in Ebbw Vale just before Christmas. As time was ticking on, we decided to acquire some additional space in order to let us get started in advance of the refurb being complete on the main building. I am happy to say that this has now been achieved - close to the the main facility. We have already begun the move from our Guildford development site to the new unit and to configure the building for pre-production builds, pilot builds etc.”
What happened to the new smaller site?
MarJay said:
He did it, but perhaps by accident to some extent. Rumour has it he wasn't all that interested in bikes but wanted a loss making business on his books for tax reasons... I think he was kind of shocked when it started to be profitable.
Theses is some truth in that, but the shocked to profitable bit is wrong. It was designed to succeed from day 1. He had a very clear vision of what needed to happen.I know it only an online forum, and just throwing ideas about, and some would be great in the pub - about how to build your own kit car, but in the real world, they are not going to reveal their commercial secrets/sensitive information to people online.
As for getting someone else to build the car. I particularly liked the suggestion that Wrightbus,( now owned by the Bamford Bus Company (son of JCB) could do it). It might be a bit long and wide on a current double decker chassis though! Ticket machine and a bucket from a JCB digger on the options list perhaps?
As for the others, no other car manufacturer is going to do it. Some on the list don't really produce a road car, and certainly not something that will be a Porsche rival. A cuckoo in their factory? Why would they? It is too disruptive and it doesn't fit their systems. And they don't just have staff sitting around waiting for work like that! No one even mentioned Ford. There is a lot of Mustang in the Griffith. They are best placed to do it, in a way!
You are not just asking them to manufacture a finished product like Magna Steyr do for many manufacturers, you are expecting someone to produce some prototypes and develop, test and then manufacture. Prodrive or Ricardo might be an option. By far the best option is GMD who designed and built the one and only car. The problem is money. They would want £ millions to do it and once they have developed it, you would then have to find someone else to build it. It would not be cost effective to use them as your factory.
As for getting someone else to build the car. I particularly liked the suggestion that Wrightbus,( now owned by the Bamford Bus Company (son of JCB) could do it). It might be a bit long and wide on a current double decker chassis though! Ticket machine and a bucket from a JCB digger on the options list perhaps?
As for the others, no other car manufacturer is going to do it. Some on the list don't really produce a road car, and certainly not something that will be a Porsche rival. A cuckoo in their factory? Why would they? It is too disruptive and it doesn't fit their systems. And they don't just have staff sitting around waiting for work like that! No one even mentioned Ford. There is a lot of Mustang in the Griffith. They are best placed to do it, in a way!
You are not just asking them to manufacture a finished product like Magna Steyr do for many manufacturers, you are expecting someone to produce some prototypes and develop, test and then manufacture. Prodrive or Ricardo might be an option. By far the best option is GMD who designed and built the one and only car. The problem is money. They would want £ millions to do it and once they have developed it, you would then have to find someone else to build it. It would not be cost effective to use them as your factory.
Peter H 111 said:
Then you should have taken a better photo, because that looks terrible. Either you have terrible taste in cars and that is as bad as it looks, or you are terrible at photos and it some way it looks better in real life
LucyP said:
No one even mentioned Ford. There is a lot of Mustang in the Griffith. They are best placed to do it, in a way!
You are not just asking them to manufacture a finished product like Magna Steyr do for many manufacturers, you are expecting someone to produce some prototypes and develop, test and then manufacture. Prodrive or Ricardo might be an option. By far the best option is GMD who designed and built the one and only car. The problem is money. They would want £ millions to do it and once they have developed it, you would then have to find someone else to build it. It would not be cost effective to use them as your factory.
Why (and where) would Ford do specialist low volume production and how would they be cheaper than say GMD, who have a vested interest in getting their iSTREAM process into a production factory?You are not just asking them to manufacture a finished product like Magna Steyr do for many manufacturers, you are expecting someone to produce some prototypes and develop, test and then manufacture. Prodrive or Ricardo might be an option. By far the best option is GMD who designed and built the one and only car. The problem is money. They would want £ millions to do it and once they have developed it, you would then have to find someone else to build it. It would not be cost effective to use them as your factory.
I think we are both heading down the same narrow lane. There's not enough money currently to get production ready cars built and tested and probably not enough to kit out a factory full of production equipment, something I do know about!
julian64 said:
Peter H 111 said:
Then you should have taken a better photo, because that looks terrible. Either you have terrible taste in cars and that is as bad as it looks, or you are terrible at photos and it some way it looks better in real lifelukeharding said:
julian64 said:
Peter H 111 said:
Then you should have taken a better photo, because that looks terrible. Either you have terrible taste in cars and that is as bad as it looks, or you are terrible at photos and it some way it looks better in real lifeWhile I'm disappointed to discover that we are now more than four years in to "a 10-year plan that will put at least four new TVRs on the road from 2017," the new Griffith prototype continues to look good, in my opinion.
Watching yesterday's video from Shmee, this small-ish red car is quite pleasing round town:
https://www.facebook.com/Shmee150/videos/207016637...
I see in this PH thread a number of complaints about the look of this car: the design is rubbish or the design has been left to atrophy too many years. But I don't have those reactions.
To me, although the endless delays -- the grotesque excuses, the painful silences -- are all but unforgivable, the product itself continues to impress. Alright, the interior is nothing to write home about, but it will do.
lukeharding said:
julian64 said:
Peter H 111 said:
Then you should have taken a better photo, because that looks terrible. Either you have terrible taste in cars and that is as bad as it looks, or you are terrible at photos and it some way it looks better in real lifeRude is to insult someone. Suggesting someone has terrible taste in car might be considered an insult so appologies. But it seems a very very low bar to set especially when you have a post count which suggests you have been posting for a while. Are you sure youre not reading more into it than is there?
cidered77 said:
So many miserable old b
ds queuing up to knock these guys... what they are trying to do it hard, very hard, and no matter what communications they put out The Internet is ready with lots of middle aged men calling out how terribly they are doing, likely from their safe office jobs.
Mediocre rant. While it is commendable to try and get a new or revived car brand to market in this day and age some of the actions and decisions taken by those in charge have been utterly incompetent and fully deserve lots of criticism. ds queuing up to knock these guys... what they are trying to do it hard, very hard, and no matter what communications they put out The Internet is ready with lots of middle aged men calling out how terribly they are doing, likely from their safe office jobs. Not knowing they had to put the tender out to the wider EU being one glaring mistake for a start.
imuir said:
BigChiefmuffinAgain said:
But are they actually "ready to go" and build a car, even in small quantities ? The article seems to suggest that there is only the 1 car in existence. It doesn't sound like this has had any testing or development work done to it, crash testing, hot and cold testing etc... I've never seen any "spy pics" of any other cars - it sounds like they have only just concluded a deal on a new engine ( which will have to be engineered to fit and tested, I assume ).
They may well be holding off doing any of this, which involves spending a lot of money, until they have made more progress on the factory but it does feel that they are quite a long time from actually having a car to deliver to anyone. Not sure about this one....
TVR testing and development has always been done by customersThey may well be holding off doing any of this, which involves spending a lot of money, until they have made more progress on the factory but it does feel that they are quite a long time from actually having a car to deliver to anyone. Not sure about this one....
Cookie - My point about Ford was just to illustrate that was less bizarre than asking a bus manufacturer. Neither would be interested.
As for iStream - It has been around for years now and GM has kept updating it, but it's still basically tubes and now composite panels, and no one is really into tubular anymore as I guess you know. It's an VAG MQB type platform that you can spin loads of different models off, or it's a carbon fibre or aluminium tub. GM will be 74 this year. I wonder if he's really bothered now. Yamaha showed 2 concept cars based on it, a few years ago, but then decided that car production is not for them.
GM has said that iStream can be used profitably for volumes of between 1,000 and 350,000 vehicles, so it probably won't suit TVR either!
As for iStream - It has been around for years now and GM has kept updating it, but it's still basically tubes and now composite panels, and no one is really into tubular anymore as I guess you know. It's an VAG MQB type platform that you can spin loads of different models off, or it's a carbon fibre or aluminium tub. GM will be 74 this year. I wonder if he's really bothered now. Yamaha showed 2 concept cars based on it, a few years ago, but then decided that car production is not for them.
GM has said that iStream can be used profitably for volumes of between 1,000 and 350,000 vehicles, so it probably won't suit TVR either!
snuffy said:
Peter H 111 said:
It looks dated already, ordinary and not at all aggressive.It doesn't need to look aggressive, it just needs to not look like an MX5. TBF that's a little unfair to the MX5 as all MX5 models bar maybe the NC look better than that.
ChocolateFrog said:
If you ask me the original Griffith doesn't look aggressive at all, the Chimaera even less so still. They're still great cars IMO.
I've never understood this either, this wanting it to be 'aggressive'. My Chimaera looks as unaggressive from the front as it gets. Like a sweet little puppy.
LucyP said:
Yes it is unfeasible because the vehicle hasn't been tested or developed. The only car that they have is a prototype, built by a 3rd party. Prototypes are expensive to build and you need several, even with all the virtual testing. No manufacturer builds as few as 10 of them, let alone one, because you need to run several programs at one - hot weather, cold weather, endurance, crash, etc etc. and you have to modify each new prototype to take account of what you discover during testing, and that all takes time too.
If you don't test and develop properly, and leave it to the dealers, and customers, then you end up with TVR as it used to be. The undeveloped, badly built with rubbish components, Speed 6 engine sunk the company. The Griffith is priced like a Porsche, and it has to be built and be reliable like one. The problem is that TVR do not have the money, the facilities or the staff to do any of that, and even if they did, they would never recoup the development costs and make it a profitable venture on the projected sales at the projected price.
They're the antithesis of Porsche, the price is almost irrelevant. They were bought precisely because they weren't a Porsche back in the day. If you don't test and develop properly, and leave it to the dealers, and customers, then you end up with TVR as it used to be. The undeveloped, badly built with rubbish components, Speed 6 engine sunk the company. The Griffith is priced like a Porsche, and it has to be built and be reliable like one. The problem is that TVR do not have the money, the facilities or the staff to do any of that, and even if they did, they would never recoup the development costs and make it a profitable venture on the projected sales at the projected price.
A modern TVR needs to
Look great
Be bloody fast (manual accepted)
Make a great sound
And ideally but not essential
Have a slightly whacky or off beat interior.
Do that for £60k ish and enough enthusiats will buy them even if they're a bit flaky because they haven't been tested in Norway or Morocco.
julian64 said:
lukeharding said:
julian64 said:
Peter H 111 said:
Then you should have taken a better photo, because that looks terrible. Either you have terrible taste in cars and that is as bad as it looks, or you are terrible at photos and it some way it looks better in real lifeRude is to insult someone. Suggesting someone has terrible taste in car might be considered an insult so appologies. But it seems a very very low bar to set especially when you have a post count which suggests you have been posting for a while. Are you sure youre not reading more into it than is there?
Personally I don't mind the way it looks, I neither love it nor hate it. But then I don't think that TVR has ever been the paradigm of aesthetic beauty that others seem to (though I'm a big fan of the Sagaris). However I don't feel the need to tell someone that their taste is rubbish because they don't agree with my opinion on something, as I understand that their taste is different to my own, not lesser or greater. PH can be a great place, but often spoiled by everyone putting each other down.
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff