Do they still make TVRs in Malaysia?

[iguana]

I know they made Chims, just wondering do they still? & if they made any other TreVoRs out there?

[goo-goo-gjoob]

All TVR's made in Blackpool, AFAIK.

[griff2be]

No my Lizardy friend, I believe the venture went the way of an inverted mammary

>> Edited by griff2be on Friday 7th January 09:33

[Graham]

well their e-mail bounces..


pity as they were a nice bunch of people, and the finished cars i saw were nice.

plus they did some real racing and were sucessfull i.e overall win of the sepang 12 hour race...


there is some debate over how many chims 97-98 were actually malaysian built in knockdown and set back to uk.

i.e malaysia said most of them uk say 1 or 2 !!!!

[Toffer]

The venture finsihed ages ago and I think only included Chimaeras which were bulit from a Blackpool kit of parts. You do see Malaysian built ones around so I suspect it was more than "1 or 2" imported to the UK. I am struggling to remember the differences but think the rear number plate mounting area was somehow different to UK production?

[Graham]

Toffer said:

The venture finsihed ages ago and I think only included Chimaeras which were bulit from a Blackpool kit of parts. You do see Malaysian built ones around so I suspect it was more than "1 or 2" imported to the UK. I am struggling to remember the differences but think the rear number plate mounting area was somehow different to UK production?

both Chassis and bodies were built in Malaysia as was the interior... only the engines and a few other bits and bobs were sent over..

The mk2 Chim body came about due to changes they needed for the hotter climate ( bigger bonnet vents etc)

i think the venture failed due to the fact there was no sales area or dealers other than the factory in the port area.

the car i saw in their show room was very well put together and even :shock horror: the ecu was mounted on a bracket and not just stuffed in and there was room in the passenger footwell as they had replaced the batt tray with a smaller gel battery, again with a proper mount.

They were still about 18 months ago as i tried to persuade them to sell me body chassis units to sell in the usa as kit cars to be fitted with corvette ls1 engines... but they didnt want to upset the uk factory.. a

[andysgriff]

As far as I know the Malaysian factory is having a breather from producing Chims. I haven't been up to the factory yet but my friend who has a 4 ltr Chim here in KL has and he tells me they (more or less) make the whole things there. I phoned the factory to ask what was going on and they said they are still open and were developing a TVR (wouldnt say which model) with an engine to suit the car road tax laws here. I heard rumours that it would be a 2 litre ish engined car though.

The road tax is proportioanl to the CC of the engine and anything over 3 litres gets really expensive to tax, I think about 1500 - 2000 quid a year... List price for a new Chim is around 42,000 GBP, another reason why they didnt sell that many..

[Graham]

andysgriff said:

List price for a new Chim is around 42,000 GBP, another reason why they didnt sell that many..

Ah yes but isnt that a lot less than a boxter, as the porker has a stupid amount of import tax where as the chim was classed as built in malaysia..

Im sure if they had had a dealership in KL they would have made more of a success.

I really wish the guys out there luck with anything they do. The race chims they produced were nicley put together. In fact i was very tempted by the endurance car in aus.

G

[nztrev]

Graham said:

andysgriff said: List price for a new Chim is around 42,000 GBP, another reason why they didnt sell that many.. Ah yes but isnt that a lot less than a boxter, as the porker has a stupid amount of import tax where as the chim was classed as built in malaysia.. Im sure if they had had a dealership in KL they would have made more of a success. I really wish the guys out there luck with anything they do. The race chims they produced were nicley put together. In fact i was very tempted by the endurance car in aus. G

Yeah, after a full rebuild and a power transplant!!

[roop]

As far as I know, there shouldn't be any Malaysian built cars sold in the UK as they do not have UK type approval (or something like that). There was a Malaysian car back up at the factory for a while - they couldn't sell it because of the type approval issue. Eventually someone wrote it off.

[Gaffer]

roop said:

As far as I know, there shouldn't be any Malaysian built cars sold in the UK as they do not have UK type approval (or something like that). There was a Malaysian car back up at the factory for a while - they couldn't sell it because of the type approval issue. Eventually someone wrote it off.

Correct. There were 2 Chims brought over from Malaysia for quality checks. One ended up being dads car and the other a pool car.

I tried to buy Dads from the factory but cos they didnt have type approval it was a no go. Then the car became a pool car as well and a customer wrote it off...so that was the end of that..!


Claire

[roop]

Ayethangyoooo...!

Gaffer said:

Correct