Those of you who know that I am Italian will probably start thinking maliciously, but here we really need to look at things objectively.

I have to admit that although this plan was not publicly known, I had had "hints" of a possibility along these lines from the guys at UK Garage (the Italian importer of TVR), who have also established 6 dealers so far in Italy, predominantly in the North of course.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the only future for TVR was to outsource production to a company such as Bertone, Pininfarina, Karmann or whatever. These companies are specialised in small-scale productions of special models, and do them very cost-effectively. It has nothing to do with taking the production in a low-cost country (as Italy is NOT AT ALL a low-cost country), it is all about sharing infrstructure and costs with other manufacturing activities.

As most of you know, Pininfarina and Bertone manufacture many car models for "big" companies, those models that cannot be manufactured in sufficient volumes to justify an in-house production line. For example, Pininfarina manufactures various convertible-versions of mainstream cars, including some Ferrari models, the Alfa Romeo Brera and the Ka Cabrio. Bertone manufactures the Opel Astra Cabrio, as well as some other low-volume models from BMW and others.

So this is a business model used by many car manufacturers, and it works. By doing so, TVR will be able to guarantee a consistent quality level, and improved "industrialisation" of its models. And this will be achieved at a fraction of the cost of producing in Blackpool.

In fact, 260 manufacturing staff in Blackpool will be replaced by maybe 20 or 30 TVR-dedicated staff in Torino (please do not quote me on this number, it is just an example!), as everything will be "shared" with the rest of the Bertone production, and the overhead is consequently minimum. This also allows the cost-effective management of the "season-dependent" order flow of TVR's, in ways that cannot be achieved with a dedicated factory, in the UK or in Poland or anywhere else. In fact, there is no cheaper way to make TVRs than using companies like Bertone or Pininfarina.

The fact that the company TVR, with its designers, will stay in the UK represents the necessary continuity, as Bertone cannot replace TVR in design, marketing and selling of its cars. And I believe the about 100 employees remaining at TVR (after losing the 260 manufacturing staff) will be able to work in a much more effective way. And the fact that the engine and gearbox is produced by British Ricardo makes TVR's retain 100% their British soul and originality.

Now, the only question mark for me remains price. TVR's are sold in the rest of Europe at about 40% more of what they are sold in the UK. So, we'll have to see whether TVR will be able to maintain their low prices in the UK going forward, or whether prices will be levelled consistently at the higher European levels...

Edited by sirox - 24 October 2006 at 1:46pm

Sirox
Proud Italian owner of a fantastic TVR Tuscan Convertible, in Reflex Charcoal.
Based in London, and member of the Surrey Regional Club.

One last thing I forgot to say. I would like to say once more how I do not understand the V8 vs S6 debate. If TVR would now use, say, an American sourced engine, TVR would be dead, as there would be nothing left to keep its originality and character from tiny garage manufacturers such as Marcos. Having its own engine is what gives TVR the "potential" to compete with Porsche, something that manufacturers like Marcos and Noble will never be able to do, as they are mainly "assemblers".

And those who see in TVR the representation of British sports cars, should not forget that the classical British mechanical architecture is based on a straight-six engine mounted in the front, with rear-wheel drive. This is what any sports car enthusiast anywhere in the world thinks when thinking about British sports cars. So, despite what some V8 enthusiasts would like, having its own engine is the only possible future for TVR, and being straight-six just gives it more of a British character.

And I do not see Porsche going bankrupt for having retained their illogical 6-cylinder boxer engine, mounted at the back. Quite the opposite instead, as that is what gives it its special unique "character" that no other cars have. And this "uniqueness" is key for TVR to be successful in future.

Edited by sirox - 25 October 2006 at 9:20pm

Sirox
Proud Italian owner of a fantastic TVR Tuscan Convertible, in Reflex Charcoal.
Based in London, and member of the Surrey Regional Club.

Very well put.  It is how I understood the manufacturing situation was (although from a limited knowledge) and one I very loosely referred to this morning in 'Is it Over'.

Just to fuel the Sp6 v V8 debate and maybe to go over old ground. there seems to be distinct groups.  I always wanted a TVR and always wanted a V8 therefore 'RESULT' with my Chimaera and I think there are many more like me.  Surely the V8 is still essentially a bought-in engine, even if it is modified to suit TVR and I assume that could be still be the case.

I have no particular problem with the Speed 6 and agree that having an in-house engine is a major selling point but when it comes down to it, I still would like to see a V8 in a Tiv and even if not viable in the short term, could still be worth investigating for the future.  Earlier threads have, I think, reinforced that.

When the time comes to change from the Chimaera and if the money is available I would definitely consider a Tuscan 2 with a Speed 6 but I would desperately want a Tuscan 2 with a V8!!

Two interesting posts sirox

How many of those 6 dealers have been established in the last...say.....5 months?  do you know?

YP

Pauline/Yellow Peril/Rhubarb
'Increase Your Heart Rate'

IP Logged

The UK Garage guys have established the other 5-6 dealers in the last 6 months, more or less. Their overall target for sales in the whole of Italy going forward is about 50 a year, which I believe is realistic until the brand gets stronger.

UK Garage themselves have been in business for a while, and in fact there are quite a few Tuscans Mk1 running around across Italy (I really mean a few, maybe 20 or 30).

I am 100% convinced that the manufacturing by Bertone will significantly increase the recognition of the TVR brand (which is now completely unknown outside the UK, with the exception of the enthusiasts), and will give the company significant returns.

I have to admit though, that TVR's PR is EXTREMELY poor. It would have been 100 times better to give the Bertone announcement together with the news about the UK factory closure, avoiding giving the impression of the company actually closing.
And its PR is even poorer for not clarifying the fact that they are laying off only the manufacturing staff, not the whole company, which has in fact somewhere around 350 employees in total (according to public information). They should really do a much better job at explaining that TVR will still be in business, with a much reduced UK workforce perhaps, but with a clear strategy.

Sirox
Proud Italian owner of a fantastic TVR Tuscan Convertible, in Reflex Charcoal.
Based in London, and member of the Surrey Regional Club.

Sirox, I am 99% with you on this, the only area I would disagree is that to me a British sports car is a V8, I like the SP6 but love the V8, lets not forget however that TVR did and can produce an in-house V8.

I don't know if you read on the other thread but I mentioned here in the Philippines we assemble

Volvo's, BMW's, Toyota, Nissan and  Mitsubishi how many of their owners know this.

We shoild not also forget that quite a few Chim bodies were made in Malaysia, do their owners feel the car iS any less British.

My Griff hasbeen toatly rebuilt in Singapore but I still think of it a British....

I am looking forward to the coming months and where this new road leads,

Andy

Mabuhay - V8 engines, just like deadlines, I like the whooshing noise they make as they go flying by!

Originally posted by sirox

The UK Garage guys have established the other 5-6 dealers in the last 6 months, more or less.

Gets more interesting every day.

YP

Pauline/Yellow Peril/Rhubarb
'Increase Your Heart Rate'

I wonder if TVR will resurrect the AJP V8? It would be good to have a V8 engine option as well as the speed 6

I agree with the point about TVR's PR. Even the BBC 10 o'clock news last night mentioned TVR in conjuction with Rover as a British car manufacturer which had "collapsed"!

TVR really needs to start communicating properly. If I had £50k, do think I'd be putting it down on a TVR?

Alan

Road to Damascus moments - when a TVR owner realises that what he wants most in life ....... is TWO TVRs!

Originally posted by AndyMalpass

Sirox, I am 99% with you on this, the only area I would disagree is that to me a British sports car is a V8, I like the SP6 but love the V8, lets not forget however that TVR did and can produce an in-house V8.

Well, there are certain patterns in various sports car cultures.

For example, Italian sportscars are traditionally red, and with central/back engines (even though there is great tradition of front engines with Maserati and a bit with Ferrari).

German sportscars (which means Porsche) are traditionally black, with a 6-cylinder boxer engine at the back, behind the rear wheels (911).

And British sports cars are traditionally green, convertible, with a straight-6 engine in the front, and leather/wood dashboards. This is how most people would represent a British sports car. This comes from the famous British sportscars of the past, from Aston, Jaguar, etc. As far as I know, most legendary British sports cars have had straight-6 engines, but maybe I am wrong (and please say so if I am).

Nevertheless, this is what is normally thought outside of the UK when you think of a British sportscar.

Originally posted by jonb

I wonder if TVR will resurrect the AJP V8? It would be good to have a V8 engine option as well as the speed 6

Well, Ricardo has been given the responsibility of further developing and producing the Speed-Six, so there will be no engine competence left within the little that is remaining of TVR after the production outsource. Unless Ricardo is also taking the AJP8 project in total secrecy (which does not seem likely), I do not see who would resurrevt the AJP8.

Besides, TVR's volumes are way too small to be able to afford more than one engine in its range.

Sirox
Proud Italian owner of a fantastic TVR Tuscan Convertible, in Reflex Charcoal.
Based in London, and member of the Surrey Regional Club.

I'm feeling a lot more positive about the future now than a week ago.

When the news of a move to Europe first broke, I assumed that TVR would be setting up a new factory in their own right from scratch, and I wondered how this could be achieved - where do you recruit all the speciallist skills and know how to construct a hand-built car?  I couldn't see how this could be done quickly and feared that it would never be achieved and the company would disappear.

Assembly by Bertone with drive-trains supplied from Ricardo makes much more sense & I can see how this route (if true!) would be commercially viable and assist in re-building confidence amongst potential customers.  If Ricardo are to back the warranty on the drive-train themselves, I for one would be far more reassured that the components will have had any design & manufacturiung flaws ironed out.  I am not sure how Bertone's quality compares with that of the Blackpool factory (Italian manufacture has not always been a by-word for quality), but I would assume that as a result of their commissions from major manufacturers in the past they will have had to develop robust QA systems.  Either way TVR have rightly or wrongly gained a generally bad reputation for poor reliability outside the TVR community, and outsourciung could be a good way of distancing the new cars from this at a stroke.

Autocar have a page long article in this week's magazine.  Much of what it says has already been discussed here but there are a few interesting additions.  Apparently there were brief discussions about outsourcing production to Lotus - it is a pity that other UK options were not investigated (e.g. Prodrive, etc).  Autocar also says that 2006 production could be less than 75 cars - at this level it is clear that retaining a workforce of 260 could never be viable.

Although (as an extremely patriotic Brit) I am sorry that another UK car producer is closing its UK factory (and obviously I am saddened by the loss of so many jobs), I would still put a TVR built by Bertone/Ricardo at the top of my list when the time comes to replace my Chimaera on the following conditions:

1.  TVR continue to design and style their cars with the same no compromise philosophy that they have applied for so many years (i.e. pure driving experience & lines).

2.  The pricing remains as competitive as it has been traditionally.

3.  They retain the option for the customer to personalise the car as much as has been the case in the past.

I think that as long as the design work & drive-tarin assembly remains in the UK the cars will still be 'British'.  After all British Bentleys are assembled from components brought in from all over the world (bodies from Germany), and many British marques have had collaborations with Italian coach-builders such as Bertone (Aston Martin Zagatos were built in Italy on Aston supplied chassis/running gear).

Yes, if this scenario is true, and managed correctly this could be the beginning of a renaissance.

By the way, the Autocar article also says that TVR will enter LeMans next year with a Tuscan GT developed by Tom Walkinshaw's new company TWG, and that new product in the pipeline includes a fastback Tuscan GT & less aggressively styled Sagaris - wasn't that the T350?

John

Is there a connection between the (suggested) move to Italy and the dreadful performance of the euro? Italy's financial problems are likely to get worse in the short/medium term, what with the the demands of the Maastricht Treaty giving rise to higher unemployment. The peso was obviously used as the model of how to run fiscal policy. A car built in Italy, or anywhere in the Euro zone, is likely to become cheaper to build as the economic commissioners get furnther into their design to beggar the EEC.

So, economically it looks like a good move. From what I can gather, Bertone have the set-up and, with a third party building cars, it is easier to enforce quality control. They seem to be doing an excellent job on the Astra convertible they build - although it still remains a Vauxhall at the end of the day. But this might be a good point as, hopefully, TVR will retain some of its essence.

If production does increase to 5000 units a year then this can only be good news for the marque. As John indicates, if TVRs remain the same except better, then thee will still be a market, and an increasing one, in this country.

As John says, it's a dreadful shame about the employees, though.

Derek

Derek Smith
TVR Sprint Editor
Eat sensibly, exercise regularly, drink in moderation, die anyway.

Sirox. Well stated. Makes sense when you outline how this would work. I'm assuming that TVR cannot announce plans until the 90 day consultation process with the UK employees is completed. We had something similar where I worked. Everyone was put 'at risk' of redundancy whilst they consulted the staff / investigated other options to prevent closure but everyone knew it was a done deal to relocate work to another office. Once the 90 days were up we were made redundant and paid off - followed by announcements that closure met with the company's long term startegy / cost reduction etc. It pacifies the unions and is due process for more scrupulous companies. 

I am not sure which papers you read. The Euro is currently very strong, it has got stronger for the whole year, and you now need 1.25 dollars to buy a Euro...

And in 2007 both Italy and Germany will go back into the 3% deficit parameter, all backed by a very strong economic growth that has started this year in Europe.

So I do not see how there could be any advantage from a forex perspective...

The real advantage is that with Bertone TVR will make the same number of cars at a fraction of the cost. Not because labour is cheaper in Italy (trust me, it is not), but because Bertone is a shared manufacturing facility.

Sirox
Proud Italian owner of a fantastic TVR Tuscan Convertible, in Reflex Charcoal.
Based in London, and member of the Surrey Regional Club.

Sirox,

To be fair to me, I wasn't going by the dollar, which is experiencing a few problems of its own at the moment. But you probably know much more than I do about Italy's economic situation. I'm just going by what I read.

Caio,

Derek

Derek Smith
TVR Sprint Editor
Eat sensibly, exercise regularly, drink in moderation, die anyway.

The Geneva show is going to be mighty interesting...............

Andy

Mabuhay - V8 engines, just like deadlines, I like the whooshing noise they make as they go flying by!