TVR is remaining committed to the long-awaited Griffith and in a new interview, has detailed how it will bring the sports car to the street.
It has been almost three years since the TVR Griffith was shown to the world with an initial planned production date of 2019. We are now halfway through 2020 and the car is still nowhere to be seen. Past experience tells us that when this happens with a niche automaker, significant delays often result in the complete cancellation of projects. That won’t be the case with TVR.
While speaking with Autocar, the British company confirmed it is in the midst of raising £25 million ($31.8 million) on the Dublin bond market and that when production of the Griffith does begin, it would have spent roughly £45 million ($57.2 million) on the project. Fortunately, it does have orders worth around £40 million ($50 million) and says its pool of potential owners are remaining committed to the brand, despite the delays.
“It’s no secret that this project has turned out to be tougher than we expected and has taken longer,” chairman Les Edgar told the British publication. “But we’re all still completely dedicated to building a sustainable sports car business. Many of the delays have been caused by problems beyond our control.”
The delay cited by Edgar was triggered by the Welsh government purchasing a 3 per cent stake in the automaker in exchange for a £2 million ($2.5 million) loan. Under European Union requirements, the fact that TVR is now partly state-owned meant it had to accept bids to fit-out its factory from companies throughout the EU. This alone has pushed back the project by 18 months.
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TVR says equipping its factory for production should be quite simple because of the TVR’s use of Gordon Murray’s iStream assembly process that requires very little tooling and sees many major components come from external suppliers. TVR wants to eventually be building more than 2,000 Griffith models each year and will employ roughly 200 people.
“Now we have to productionise the car and achieve EC Small Series Type Approval, which allows us to build 1000 examples of each model type a year,” added chief executive Jim Berriman. “That gives us pretty good production headroom, especially as we have an entry strategy to the US that allows another 325 cars a year.”
TVR will following a similar business model to Porsche when it commences production, offering a host of Griffith derivatives. This could include a more comfortable GT version and a faster Sport version.
