New TVR still under wraps! (Vol. 3)

[Tyre Smoke]

TA14 said:

m4tti said:

Tyre Smoke said:

Wasn't that Phoenix thing by some bloke called Ash? Looking to build the first 1000hp Cerbera, didn't he get found out as a total fraud? Along with the weird 'family' that 'found' a TVR at the bottom of their lane, but it was just one guy with multiple logins and a vivid imagination?

I don’t think it was a fraud… I think the project leader went to a hotel with bars on the widows. That was one explanation of its demise..

https://www.tvr-car-club.co.uk/news/when-400bhp-ju...

You may be right. I seem to remember a sad story of good progress early on and then Ash paid instalments and got updates but little/no work was done. When Ash finally went round he found out that there were many other customers in the same boat and he lost interest as well as his money. I wonder what happened to the car. Is Ash still on here?

Ahh, my mistake and apologies to Ash if he's still about.

Whatever happened to the pic and the guy with a Boxster posing at the top of a multi storey car park with a plastic gun?

[N7GTX]

TA14 said:

I seem to remember a sad story of good progress early on and then Ash customers paid instalments and got secret updates but little/no work was done. When Ash the customers finally went round they found out that there were many other customers in the same boat and they lost interest as well as their money. I wonder what happened to the car.

Some things never change.

[Gazzab]

Ash was his own worst enemy. Yes he had issues with Rececraft but everything else was his own doing.

[TA14]

N7GTX said:

TA14 said:

I seem to remember a sad story of good progress early on and then Ash customers paid instalments and got secret updates but little/no work was done. When Ash the customers finally went round they found out that there were many other customers in the same boat and they lost interest as well as their money. I wonder what happened to the car.

Some things never change.

You could almost apply that to the current TVR set up...

[N7GTX]

TA14 said:

N7GTX said:

TA14 said:

I seem to remember a sad story of good progress early on and then Ash customers paid instalments and got secret updates but little/no work was done. When Ash the customers finally went round they found out that there were many other customers in the same boat and they lost interest as well as their money. I wonder what happened to the car.

Some things never change.

You could almost apply that to the current TVR set up...

You got it

[Jon39]

popegregory said:

Vol. 3, no car.

To sum up from those in the know, why is there no car? Were Les’s sums wrong to start with, was he relying on a few things that came to nothing, did covid scupper him somehow? Surely he had a semi-feasible plan in order to secure deposits so what’s gone wrong?

1. Did not study the history of start-up sports car manuufacturers. - Almost all fail.
2. Outsourced construction of the prototype car. Not built by TVR. No sign of the necessary in house engineering, development and car production employees.
3. The abundance of current regulations, means a huge amount of money is required to be spent on car development to meet type approval and cover (possibly many) many early years of financial losses.
4, .In view of the above and other reasons, financial investors were not interested in providing capital for the project.
Sufficiant money was not obtained, so the project could not proceed.
5. Yes, the Goodwood launch and subsequent publicity did create excitement, so prospectuve customers paid deposits, but that money totalled only a tiny proportion of the capital needed to reach the car production stage.

[anonymous-user]

Jon39 said:

popegregory said:

Vol. 3, no car.

To sum up from those in the know, why is there no car? Were Les’s sums wrong to start with, was he relying on a few things that came to nothing, did covid scupper him somehow? Surely he had a semi-feasible plan in order to secure deposits so what’s gone wrong?

1. Did not study the history of start-up sports car manuufacturers. - Almost all fail.
2. Outsourced construction of the prototype car. Not built by TVR. No sign of the necessary in house engineering, development and car production employees.
3. The abundance of current regulations, means a huge amount of money is required to be spent on car development to meet type approval and cover (possibly many) many early years of financial losses.
4, .In view of the above and other reasons, financial investors were not interested in providing capital for the project.
Sufficiant money was not obtained, so the project could not proceed.
5. Yes, the Goodwood launch and subsequent publicity did create excitement, so prospectuve customers paid deposits, but that money totalled only a tiny proportion of the capital needed to reach the car production stage.

All that ^^ can be boiled down into one line:

"Got tied up in all the glamour and excitment of making a sports car, and failed to build a valid and robust business plan to support that ambition"....

[Gazzab]

popegregory said:

Vol. 3, no car.

To sum up from those in the know, why is there no car? Were Les’s sums wrong to start with, was he relying on a few things that came to nothing, did covid scupper him somehow? Surely he had a semi-feasible plan in order to secure deposits so what’s gone wrong?

He didn’t have a plan when he secured deposits. He had some aspirations. Ultimately it seems that it was still born with a poor business plan, poor execution, no money, no capability, poor design, no hope…..covid has done them a favour eg they got a covid loan. Maybe they should have started small, maybe should have gone electric etc. Anyway, it’s all too late.

[N7GTX]

Gazzab said:

popegregory said:

Vol. 3, no car.

To sum up from those in the know, why is there no car? Were Les’s sums wrong to start with, was he relying on a few things that came to nothing, did covid scupper him somehow? Surely he had a semi-feasible plan in order to secure deposits so what’s gone wrong?

He didn’t have a plan when he secured deposits. He had some aspirations. Ultimately it seems that it was still born with a poor business plan, poor execution, no money, no capability, poor design, no hope…..covid has done them a favour eg they got a covid loan. Maybe they should have started small, maybe should have gone electric etc. Anyway, it’s all too late.

Volvo will only build electric cars from 2030 following their successful $2.3 billion IPO. (Bloomberg this morning). Their shares are 'surging' so perhaps that's where the wise money has gone.

Edited by N7GTX on Friday 29th October 13:21

[popegregory]

Max_Torque said:

All that ^^ can be boiled down into one line:

"Got tied up in all the glamour and excitment of making a sports car, and failed to build a valid and robust business plan to support that ambition"....

Which also summarises the PW-era downfall quite well

[Tyre Smoke]

popegregory said:

Max_Torque said:

All that ^^ can be boiled down into one line:

"Got tied up in all the glamour and excitment of making a sports car, and failed to build a valid and robust business plan to support that ambition"....

Which also summarises the PW-era downfall quite well

Sort of. TVR was it's most successful under PW with the Chimaera and Griffith. What he failed to do was capitalise on that success and build his own engines properly when in fact, buying a crate engine might have been the better business model.

[popegregory]

Tyre Smoke said:

popegregory said:

Max_Torque said:

All that ^^ can be boiled down into one line:

"Got tied up in all the glamour and excitment of making a sports car, and failed to build a valid and robust business plan to support that ambition"....

Which also summarises the PW-era downfall quite well

Sort of. TVR was it's most successful under PW with the Chimaera and Griffith. What he failed to do was capitalise on that success and build his own engines properly when in fact, buying a crate engine might have been the better business model.

Yes, it’s that second part I’m referring to. He got carried away with the nineties success and thought he could make not one but two of his own engines. I’m sure the “what if’s” over the idea of the speed six never happening have been done to death but it would certainly have worked out differently if he’d stuck with crate engines. What safety regulations would have done to them though is a different question.

[Tyre Smoke]

Quite. But not having the bad rep and ruinous warranty claims of the S6, and using a crate engine would have given TVR a lot more scope for safety stuff, like Morgan I guess.

But that was then and this is now as they say.

[baconsarney]

N7GTX said:

Volvo will only build electric cars from 2030 following their successful $2.3 billion IPO. (Bloomberg this morning). Their shares are 'surging' so perhaps that's where the wise money has gone.

Edited by N7GTX on Friday 29th October 13:21

That’s great news Iain, I predict my old T5 estate will be worth a fortune in a few years time

[QBee]

baconsarney said:

N7GTX said:

Volvo will only build electric cars from 2030 following their successful $2.3 billion IPO. (Bloomberg this morning). Their shares are 'surging' so perhaps that's where the wise money has gone.

Edited by N7GTX on Friday 29th October 13:21

That’s great news Iain, I predict my old T5 estate will be worth a fortune in a few years time

Especially if you power it with a pack of AA batteries

[Jon39]

N7GTX said:

Volvo will only build electric cars from 2030 following their successful $2.3 billion IPO. (Bloomberg this morning). Their shares are 'surging' so perhaps that's where the wise money has gone.

I don't know how much money Geely have put into Volvo since their purchase, but reports suggest that Ford sold Volvo to Geely for $1.8bn in 2010 and the market value is now stated as $22 bn. (Is that figure a misprint?)
Those figures seem to indicate, that Ford was not the winner of that deal.

[LucyP]

N7GTX said:

Volvo will only build electric cars from 2030 following their successful $2.3 billion IPO. (Bloomberg this morning). Their shares are 'surging' so perhaps that's where the wise money has gone.

Edited by N7GTX on Friday 29th October 13:21

The wise money always stays away from car manufacturing. Tesla and Ford are the only US car-makers not to have gone bankrupt out of the 1000s of start-ups and established companies that there have been over the years. Tesla would have gone bust too, had Musk not bought back $billions of the shares.

How many other car companies around the world have gone bust over the years, or have had to be taken over?

How many are only just surviving? How many are being propped up by parent/group companies?

Edited by LucyP on Friday 29th October 15:53

[bullittmcqueen]

LucyP said:

N7GTX said:

Volvo will only build electric cars from 2030 following their successful $2.3 billion IPO. (Bloomberg this morning). Their shares are 'surging' so perhaps that's where the wise money has gone.

Edited by N7GTX on Friday 29th October 13:21

The wise money always stays away from car manufacturing. Tesla and Ford are the only US car-makers not to have gone bankrupt out of the 1000s of start-ups and established companies that there have been over the years. Tesla would have gone bust too, had Musk not bought back $billions of the shares.

How many other car companies around the world have gone bust over the years, or have had to be taken over?

How many are only just surviving? How many are being propped up by parent/group companies?

Edited by LucyP on Friday 29th October 15:53

Tesla is now a trillion dollar company and it rides on ever higher valuations, short-squeezes and the bet that they are not a car-company but a tech company. How that will work out in the long-run remains to be seen. Crazy it is.

But we live in an investment world where companies are valued as if loss was turnover and actual turnover was profit. Fueled by bizarre amounts of printed money, and torn between fear of missing out and fear of losing everything.

It cannot end well, but noone knows when that will be. But i'm sure we'll all see it unfold.

[N7GTX]

bullittmcqueen said:

Tesla is now a trillion dollar company and it rides on ever higher valuations, short-squeezes and the bet that they are not a car-company but a tech company. How that will work out in the long-run remains to be seen. Crazy it is.

But we live in an investment world where companies are valued as if loss was turnover and actual turnover was profit. Fueled by bizarre amounts of printed money, and torn between fear of missing out and fear of losing everything.

It cannot end well, but noone knows when that will be. But i'm sure we'll all see it unfold.

Morgan Stanley are predicting Elon Musk will become the world's first trillionaire. You'd think he might have £25 million in his wallet he could let another struggling car company have.

[bullittmcqueen]

N7GTX said:

bullittmcqueen said:

Tesla is now a trillion dollar company and it rides on ever higher valuations, short-squeezes and the bet that they are not a car-company but a tech company. How that will work out in the long-run remains to be seen. Crazy it is.

But we live in an investment world where companies are valued as if loss was turnover and actual turnover was profit. Fueled by bizarre amounts of printed money, and torn between fear of missing out and fear of losing everything.

It cannot end well, but noone knows when that will be. But i'm sure we'll all see it unfold.

Morgan Stanley are predicting Elon Musk will become the world's first trillionaire. You'd think he might have £25 million in his wallet he could let another struggling car company have.

His net worth jumped more than a 1000 times that amount in the past few days