TVR have a single base platform and one base engine which they currently use (was two until last year), so the cost of development is minimal. This is where TVR saves money, by finding something that works and adapting that same thing across their range. Last year Peter Wheeler sold TVR to Nikolai Smolensky for no more than 13 million British pounds, this shows just how small a company like TVR really is.
The reason they offer such great bargains is because they cater for a very nich market and at the sae time they develop almost everything in-house. Compare that to Noble who buy their engines off Ford, the body work is done by someone else (I forget the name) and then they assemble it all in South Africa and ship it to the UK, that costs a lot more, and it's represented in the cars price for a decent model you spend 10k or more over the respective TVR, Noble don't have the facilities to manufacture their own engines and to do everything themselves.
TVR are financially stabe, very stable, very small but they simply don't set their sights too high. They wouldn't dream of making a car with the aim of mass production, not many people would buy a TVR as an everyday car, plenty would a Porsche. They target a very niche market, they have a target audience they know will buy xxx ammount of cars off them each year, and they don't over produce.
The price of a TVR is fantastic, you get so much for so little, but as Blazin said a while back, they can only apply these prices to a very select few markets. They sell in Japan but they have quite a following over there (thanks to Gran Turismo I kid you not). They do sell in a few European countriels but your talking a handfull of cars a year. If TVR were to sell in the US a car like the Sagaris wouldn't be selling for $88k (£50k) it'd be probably 50% over that, so your looking at around $120k, all of a sudden that TVR has lost it's appeal. Okay the Sagaris is a bad example since I'm sure it'll still outperform a lot other $100k cars sold in the US, so lets apply that to the TVR T350C, $61k ($35) that'd again likely be 50% up over that price, so it'd become around $90k. Now as much as I love TVR, I couldn't defend that price when the US get's the Corvette for so much less, even if TVR magically managed to keep the price the same as ni the UK (which they wouldn't), the Corvette still undercut's it.
The cost of selling in a market like the US is at the moment, far too high for TVR to attempt, it's not that they couldn't afford to get a dealership over there, it's that they couldn't sell the cars for the price they'd need to sell them for to make a profit. You can only really go into a market like that if you mass produce cars, take the Corvette over here, the base C6 costs £50k, to the T350 is over £10k less, the C6 cabriolet is £55k, thats more than the Sagaris. Yet Ceverolet is part of GM as we all know, and GM are a huge company, so they just sell the Corvettes through existing dealer networks they already have in the UK, and they can afford to only sell a handfull of them over here since they already make a mint on all the other cars they sell.
Small manufacturers can offer cheap prices, but generally only in their home markets.
Porsche can't sell each 911 for £30k and make a profit, they spend too much on R&D and they have a huge global network to fund. Making a profit isn't always just about selling the car for more than it cost to build.
).
I guess an Escalade is "super luxury"? 💡 and H3 is "luxury on crack"?
