Bertone in trouble?

[Coventrysucks]

Anyone heard anything about this?

There is a massive 54 word article in this month's Evo, stating that following the collapse of negotiations to build the new Lancia Coupe, Bertone might be forced to close, possibly as early as July.

Obviously that would mean no TVRs either...

(Although Bertone having its most successful year on record with industry-beating profits would probably mean no TVRs with the current *ahem* "management team".)

[2ndclasscitizen]

What do Bertone actually do these days? The only production car I can think of that they designed is the Astra convertible. Do they sub-contract building models for other companies?

(This might be why they're going down.)

[Ferrer]

Anyone heard anything about this?

There is a massive 54 word article in this month's Evo, stating that following the collapse of negotiations to build the new Lancia Coupe, Bertone might be forced to close, possibly as early as July.

Obviously that would mean no TVRs either...

(Although Bertone having its most successful year on record with industry-beating profits would probably mean no TVRs with the current *ahem* "management team".)
Yes I had heard of it.

Basically Bertone are in very deep trouble. there was a rumour that actually the Sugana concept car would form the basis for a Lancia folding metal roof based on the Grande Punto platform, and that this car would eventually save Bertone.

But negotiations between Fiat Group and Bertone broke some weeks ago. Several options were discussed, including take over of Bertone by Fiat. But a deal wasn't reached. The region of Piedmont is pushing hard in order to not lose the jobs that Bertone provide currently. But so far things look very bad for Bertone.

[Coventrysucks]

What do Bertone actually do these days?

Bertone is basically a manufacturer that makes other people's cars.

They specialise in niche low-volume models and can pretty much everything any other manufacturer can do, from designing, building prototypes, full production and assembly.

www.bertone.it/en/index_en.htm


But so far things look very bad for Bertone.

Oh dear.

The boss isn't a resident of Vienna is he?

[McReis]

This must have something to do with the fact that Fredrik has a Bertone. :D

[henk4]

This must have something to do with the fact that Fredrik has a Bertone. :D

There goes his spare parts supply...

[Ferrer]

Oh dear.

The boss isn't a resident of Vienna is he?
In fact it's a she. ;)

It's Lilli Betone, Nuccio's widow. She is CEO, chairman and the main shareholder.

[henk4]

In fact it's a she. ;)

It's Lilli Betone, Nuccio's widow. She is CEO, chairman and the main shareholder.

shown here with her daughter(?) showing the Barchetta last week at Villa d'Este

[dydzi]

and i was wondering what were those two women doing there... :D

[teatako]

so theyre going broke? cant be helped i guess, thats why its called darwinian economics.

[LandQuail]

Darwin never lusted after a Lancia Stratos like we all do. This, if true, is a ****ing travesty.

Say what you want about the horrors "wedge" styling inflicted on the car-loving world (Triumph TR8, anyone?), what came from Giuseppe "Nuccio" Bertone's pen was often brilliant and I'll put the Stratos WRC car against any for purity of form and function.

As far as the end of TVRs goes, well, two dudes from Florida bought it all up and anyone who reads my posts frequently knows how I feel about Florida.

Here's from page 3 of the 2008 Chevrolet Malibu breaks cover thread:

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"There is no God in Florida. Worst vacation of my life...


Its too long a story to tell, but the trip ended with a panic-retreat from a $40/night motel in Destin.

Aw, hell. It's a pretty good story.

I'd just turned 19, and me and a couple friends decided to take a week's vacation one summer. For some reason, we picked Florida over Mexico, which is a decision we all regret. At least in Mexico, you expect everything to be ****ed up.

So, we drive to Destin, Florida in high spirits, and check into the cheapest motel we can find. We went to the beach for a while, bought Booze on a fake I.D., and settled in for a night of quiet drinking-in.

By about 2 a.m., we were all pretty drunk, and one of my hillbilly buddies, who still goes by "Deer Chili" had gone a few doors down to party with a bunch of local rich-kid ravers. Not my scene, but to each his own.

He said he'd be right back, so we didn't worry until my other friend tried to call him. One time, the phone picked up on what my friend said "sounded like hell." It just rang without an answer whenever he tried to call again.

I went looking for Deer Chili at around 5 a.m.. Apparently, they'd fed him X, which, on top of the towering whisky drunk he'd been riding for the previous two days, must have turned him into a goddamn werewolf. The motel suite appeared deserted, except for one fat kid, and there were signs of violence everywhere. A lamp was smashed. The TV was in the kitchen sink. The drapes were torn from the wall and broken glass and cigarette butts littered the floor The fat kid was sitting on the couch, looking dazed or drunk or high or rollin' or god knows what.
I asked him if he'd seen a guy with no shirt and a big sombrero who talked like me and was carrying a bottle of whisky (that would have been Old Deer Chili). The fat kid said yes, and pointed to a closed bedroom door pulsating with that god-awful shit the ravers listen to.
"But don't go in there," he said. "They're doing drugs in there."

Whisky makes you open doors what maybe oughn't be opened. Deer Chili, bless his soul, didn't belong in that room. I could feel it.

Well, I'd been drinkin' whisky too. And I recognized by this point I was on a rescue mission, so I went in.

The smell of sweat and pot was nauseating. These kids had been partying in this foul motel suite for days, and they'd come to the party loaded for bear. There was another familiar smell I couldn't identify. I opened that door onto a scene that, at first, looked like something straight out of a Bosch landscape. No Lights; there were dim figures and glowing streaks everywhere. It looked like the room was full of glowing bats, swooping and diving. My brain just couldn't process it, but something awful was clearly happening in there.

As my eyes adjusted to the light cast by the green glowing display on the boom-box, I made out a raver dude leaning over the bed waving handfuls of glow sticks around. I think it was supposed to trippy, or 'third-eye-opening' some such raver-nonsense, but a raver girl laying back on the bed seemed to be enjoying the hell out of it. She had her hand down her pants anyway.

Before I had time to process this awful scene, I spotted Deer Chili across the room. He was in bad shape. He was leaning against the opposite wall, still clutching his whisky and a cigarette that had burned down to the filter and extinguished itself. Even in the dim light, I could tell he was crying, and I barely heard him say "Joe, you've got to get me out of here" over the music.

I shoved that damn raver out of the way and waded through a room filled with empties and trash. I grabbed Deer Chili by the arm and pulled him out of there before the ravers had a clue anybody had ever came in.
Poor Deer Chili... His sombrero was hanging by its cord down on his back and his eyes were blood-red. He looked like some sort of crazy, broken, new-age cowboy. He was crying, I later found out, because those two damn ravers had blown Vic's Vap-O-Rub into his eyes.

On our way out, he told the fat kid to "go back to the sea; go back to the big water." Never did know what he meant by that one, but I think it was a reference to the movie Free Willy.

As it turned out, he'd gone over to the party and started some shit with the ravers. Ravers, as some of you may know, can't fight worth a damn, while a drunken hillbilly is basically a killing machine. Anyway, he'd gone through the lot of them like a bull in a china shop, and single-handedly broken up the party. But not before making a couple friends, who fed him pot and X until he was so far gone he let them blow Vap-o-rub, that liquid stuff you're supposed to rub on your chest when you've got the flu, into his open eyeballs. From that point, he was effectively blind, and said after looking for "I don't know how long" for the door he gave up on finding any way out of that bedroom.

By this time the sun was rising, and we all just wanted to get the **** out of Florida and that damn motel before we all got arrested and wound up in some sort of reverse-deliverance nightmare. I got behind the wheel, still drunk, pointed my old Toyota Land Cruiser back towards Arkansas, and we chirped the **** out of the joint — we did not look back. The three of us didn't say a word until we crossed the state line and got ourselves out of that god-forsaken state.


And that is why I believe God does not exist in Florida.

...worst day of my life. never going to that state again. hope it falls off and sinks."
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So two guys from that state, who elected Jeb Bush as Governor and, through stupidity, probably got ole' G.W. Bush into the oval office and our country into a second, sandier Vietnam, have bought TVR?

TVR was doomed. Now it's in worse shape.

[kingofthering]

No, now all TVRs will be made from plastic and have OHV. As for suspension, look for leaf springs and twist beams and a return to boxy wedges.

[The_Canuck]

No, now all TVRs will be made from plastic and have OHV. As for suspension, look for leaf springs and twist beams and a return to boxy wedges.

Better then what they're making now. Nothing.

[Ferrer]

No, now all TVRs will be made from plastic and have OHV. As for suspension, look for leaf springs and twist beams and a return to boxy wedges.
Weren't they already made of plastic?

[Coventrysucks]

well, two dudes from Florida bought it all up

Smolenski still owns TVR, and the people who had cars on order/ inbuild before last October have been talking to previous TVR MD David Oxley.

[LandQuail]

Copied/pasted from: http://news.windingroad.com/earningsfinancials/tvr-changes-hands-yet-again-this-time-to-florida-entrepreneurs/
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TVR Changes Hands Yet Again, This Time To Florida Entrepreneurs
Filed Under: Earnings/Financials, Europe, Plants/Manufacturing, Trends, Convertibles, Coupes, Sports/GTs, Super Cars, Automotive News, TVR February 28th, 2007 5:07 PM


This is all getting a bit absurd. If you’re just catching up with us, embattled British supercar manufacturer TVR appears to be getting passed around like the clap.

In our last episode, the Blackpool-based concern was purchased out of receivership by Russian plutocrat Nikolai Smolenski—the very man who owned the company before it fell into administration at the hands of PFK Partners. It’s been one week since that time. Now, it turns out, Smolenski has quietly pawned off the marque on a pair of Florida-based businessmen, Adam Burdette and Jean Michel Santacreu.

As the story goes, TVR’s new owners believe that the company can sell about 5000 units per year, and it says they already have 2000 cars ordered by U.S.-based dealers (yes, this sounds fishy to us, too). Further, Burdette and Santacreu apparently only see a trickle of TVRs heading back to Blighty… perhaps 250-500 cars.

So who is going to build ‘em? Ricardo Engineering, a well-regarded supplier, has apparently been tapped for powertrain R&D, and the cars will be assembled in Italy by Bertone. The duo says that they can begin building new TVRs within three months.

Yikers.
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The operative word there, I reckon, is 'quietly.'

Unless the author of this is wrong, it looks like TVR is headed stateside, at least in name, where I prophesy it will putrify, mold, dessicate and die.

I hope I'm wrong.

[Coventrysucks]

Unless the author of this is wrong

The February 28th press conference merely announced Burdette and Santacreu as "managing partners", not "new owners".

Smolenski intends to remain onboard until TVR becomes profitable and his investment can be recouped, at which point he will transfer his stake in the company to Bungle and George.

David Oxley is still MD, and Jason Oxley Sales Director.


The duo says that they can begin building new TVRs within three months.

Where are they then?

Where are the contracts with Ricardo, Bertone etc?

Where are the American type approvals?

Has anyone in the USA actually placed an order?

Does TVR have any customers, aside from a few people in the UK still waiting for their cars to be finished?

What happened to the supposed announcement in April, regarding production?

Where's this new Typhoon that was supposed to be unveiled at Geneva?

Is the production tooling still sat in storage?

[LandQuail]

They're all in somebody's feverd and confused head, apparently; likely some Floridian's head at that, and I'm not even going to get into my feelings about Florida...

If I've given you the impression, Coventrysucks, that I'm enthusiastic and optimistic about TVR's chances of survival in the U.S. of A., then I deeply apologize.

Hearing TRV had gone under hit me like a suckerpunch to the gut. Hearing Smolenski had bought it back for $3 million was like getting sprayed in the face with shit-mist, and hearing about two cocksure douchebags from Florida buying up all the offal that remained and making such promises as new models within months was like getting hit point-blank in the dick by an Anna Kournikova power serve.

This all leaves a man feeling pretty ****ing weary and pessimistic about the next few occurrences waiting in the wings for the near future.

If TVR has to go — and I earnestly hope somethign snatches it from the fire before it's reduced to oily, sooty notingness— I'd just like to see it go quickly and with as little further pain as possible.

Let's have a final TRV Board of Director's meeting where they crash two remotely-driven Speed 12s into each other at top speed (with Smolenski standing, boyish good looks briefly intact, at ground zero if the EU would approve it) and call ballgame on the whole sordid mess.

Jeers.