Southways Automotive

After some deep thought, we have regretfully decided to put the Supercat model/franchise on the market. Our workshop workload has gathered pace at a rate no one could have predicted, and we don’t have the spare man hours to continue developing the Supercat model. We’ve decided to call it a day, and sell all rights, building jigs and body moulds on to another company or individual who can apply more time into catering for both potential new customers, and the already strong ownership base already using cars both build by ourselves and Tiger Racing before us. A further announcement will be made once the package is officially up for sale. Thanks.

Another year draws to an end at Southways Automotive – Kit, Classic & Sports Car Specialists (guessing it does everywhere else too…..on this planet at least!)

Thanks for everybody’s support throughout 2013. It’s been an even busier year than last! Turnover has increased by around 20% on 2012; sadly operating costs and overheads have also increased, so we won’t be ordering those private jets just yet, but it’s progress all the same. In this climate that’s something to be proud of.

2013 has carried on roughly where 2012 left off. We’ve been busy. Really busy! It almost goes without saying that the TVR side of the business has continued to flourish, where we’ve seen a sharp increase in the number of repair work bookings, rather than chassis refurbishments (though these have continued to grow in demand also). To top this off we’ve had a strong kit-car based work year too, and some of the existing projects we’re running are really gathering pace. With some of the current big-ticket projects due for completion in 2014, it’s going to be a great year already! And that’s before we get some new arrivals over the coming weeks & months!

It’s always good to be busy (you’ll never catch us complaining about it) but this year has been pretty exhausting all round! It’s been flat-out pretty much start to finish, and some of the goals and targets we had have suffered as a result (there’s the SuperCat Evolution work, Rob the Chimaera demo car to be built, the chassis refurb of the S1….which was a STAND IN for Rob while that he sat on the back burner) but we’ll keep plugging away.

2014 is going to be a “streamlining” year for the company. The goal is to just keep doing what we’ve been doing for 2013, rather than trying to do anything new, but to try and do what we do more efficiently. Running a regular garage would be easy, what with book-times and 2hr jobs, but in this domain it’s actually very tricky to make what you tend to do as a hobby in your garage at home work as a business (as anybody who catches me on my lunchbreak will testify!) Somehow we’ve been managing it over the last several years, but 2014 is the year where we’re planning to see turnaround times shorten, booking in times shorten and the weeds out in the yard getting picked.

Special thanks to those who’ve said so many kind words over the year in public domains, such as the PistonHeads forum. Nobody writes positive reviews in the quest to seek discounts or special treatment, but each piece doesn’t usually go unnoticed and it’s very much appreciated by us all. We’ve added some of the greatest customers the company has had to our address books this year, so thank you all.

Have a great New Year, and with luck I’ll get more time to update the Facebook blogs next year too!