TVR laying off half of it's staff

[Captain Jack]

It might be: that's for we Gorn to know & you hu-mans to worry about.

Just keep off the subject of diamonds...

I never leave home without some saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal in my pocket. You can't be too careful.

[Joe Black]

saltpetre...

...seems quite a quaint term these days.

I'm not the youngest person here by any stretch, but when I was I always used to ask for potassium nitrate when I went to the chemists.

[PerlOfWisdom]

What about its' ?

The Adams Family character Cousin It had a friend of the same name. Between them they bought a car.

This was the Its' car?

[DimPrawn]

Read this

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4925436.stm

So true. It's only a matter of time.

[Fungus]

All fancy clubbing together to buy TVR!

The problem is that were we to buy the factory, the front door would fall off on day one, then the roof would leak in the first rain storm, the chairs would be uncomfortable, and well, why bother. Even Ford factories are better put together.

So why are they not selling many cars?

I remember a test drive of the new and old TVR models on Fifth Gear. During the test drive the gear knob fell off from one of the cars, and something broke on the other. The journos made it clear that they were not well made.

[hyperD]

I remember a test drive of the new and old TVR models on Fifth Gear. During the test drive the gear knob fell off from one of the cars, and something broke on the other. The journos made it clear that they were not well made.

Having owned 2 and being a TVRCC member, as long as you don't buy the first off the production line they're not as bad as the press make out. They suffer a bad image from people saying they are badly made (as was in the past when they used blue tack!) when in actual fact they're hand built and the build quality has improved tremendously and is far superior to Lotus, for instance.

I've used both cars as every day cars and although the Griff had some cooling problems in the summer, I drove the Tuscan 4500 miles around Eastern Europe last year with no problems. The 380bhp 4 litre straight six is absolutely stunning and the cars attract so much attention.

They are like no other cars - aggressive, exciting, noisy and extremely fast and eat Porsches for dinner.

And unlike a Ferrari, you don't have to fork out £2000 for a windscreen etc

Bit like marmite - you either like it or hate it. But at least test drive one before pandering to the stereotypical soundbite...

And Jason Plato is a knob anyhow...Tiff loves 'em.

[Fungus]

And Jason Plato is a knob anyhow...Tiff loves 'em.

The test drives I saw were by Stiff Noodle and that podgy posh bint whose name escapes me. Ah. I remember. Vicky Butler Henderson.

So why aren't they selling? They have excellent styling.

[hyperD]

The test drives I saw were by Stiff Noodle and that podgy posh bint whose name escapes me. Ah. I remember. Vicky Butler Henderson.

So why aren't they selling? They have excellent styling.

Yes, that was for the Sagaris/Tuscan 2 shootout with VBH and Plato. There have also been reviews of the Griffith (Tiff) and the Tuscan (VBH) who kept squealing whenever she had the car sideways (Mmmmmm, squealing VBH...)

Peter Wheeler sold the company to the Russian Smolensky who immediately worked on the quality control issues and gave the new cars a 3 year guarantee.

TVR suffered with the initial unreliability of their Speed 6 engine with alot of customers having rebuilds - and not just one. These have more or less been resolved although customers (including me) do like the V8 blocks.

They also suffer from an image problem - just as the BBC news website added the usual "unreliable" comment and then removed it later, most people associate the words "TVR" and "unreliable". Remember the two Porsche Boxters on Driven (Penny Malory and the used car salesman) Boxter vs' TVR episode? Both Boxters lunched their clutches and had to be pushed into the hanger for the final piece to camera! Didn't stop Porsche selling them by the millions though and herein lies the problem.

There are also problems with their management and customer service - I was on the receiving side of this as well with classic examples of not answering your calls, replying to letters etc

There are also softer issues - there are alot of older TVRs on the market in the £10k - 20k range and the once better image of TVR appealed to younger people. Lets face it, it's the car that has the Ferrari performance for a third of the price but there still is a demographic that buys the car, it has a few niggles and they sell it disappointed, expecting the reliability of a Toyota. Little do they know that the same problems exist with Lambo's, Nobles, Ferraris etc For some reason, super rich people seem to be quite happy throwing money at their Ferraris, while cash constrained others don't.

It is an image problem that was almost sorted by the previous owner Peter Wheeler - he and Clarkson are best mates and JC used to always praise TVR (once saying he was too gay to own a TVR!).

Disappointingly they seem to have stopped racing as well.

Another factor could be that the UK economy is not quite as rosy as it seems - it would be interesting to see how other sales such as Lotus and Noble are doing.

Lots of rumours going around at the moment so just sit back and watch!

[AtW]

Another factor could be that the UK economy is not quite as rosy as it seems - it would be interesting to see how other sales such as Lotus and Noble are doing.

Noble is doing very well - IMO the reason is that design of his cars is much nicer and it looks actually like Ferrari where as TVR is something ugly with speed of Ferrari for 1/3 the price.

[Fungus]

Noble is doing very well - IMO the reason is that design of his cars is much nicer and it looks actually like Ferrari where as TVR is something ugly with speed of Ferrari for 1/3 the price.

What do search engine designers know about styling? To my eyes TVR Tuscans and Chimaeras look amazing, whereas I find Ferrari incredibly ugly, old fashioned and rather stupid looking as they are too wide and angular.

Okay maybe it was Plato and VBH in the test drive.

TVR styling has not changed much in the last few years so that cannot explain the drop in sales. Nor surely can reliability concerns as Landies always sold well despite poor reliability (now said to be much improved). I can't think of an obvious competitior. Maybe the ownership by a pre-teen not quite out of nappies did for the image. Or maybe they stuffed up with dealers, marketing or something. Maybe the Russian child owner blew the marketing budget on bubblegum and X-Box games.