Elmwood TVR, Ewell, Surrey
Listed in Car Mechanics as Elmwood TVR, Pinewood place, I first checked the website listed of TVRFIX.COM.
This now goes to a new website, carservicerepairssurrey.co.uk, which also informed me that the business has moved to new, larger premises in Kingston Road, Ewell.
With the postcode set into my sat-nav I was quite confident in finding Elmwood TVR located in Ewell without too much of a problem.
Sitting on Kingston Road behind the Esso fuel station, even without any signage the workshop is nice and easy to find. Driving around to the car park and reception area I knew I was in the right place, with three TVRS sitting in the car park.
Toby Spencer started up in business on his own in 1993 when he went out on the road as a mobile mechanic, working from the back of his van. After nearly ten years Toby, together with a colleague who carried out bodywork, moved into premises at Pinewood Place, half a mile from the workshop where they’re now located.
Toby partnered up with his wife Clair in 2003, and together they formed Elmwood TVR. In 2008 the Pinewood premises were taken over by Aldi to be redeveloped as a supermarket, and they needed to find another workshop.
Vowing not to rent again and to give them a bit of stability, they looked for a freehold site. Fate was kind and they found it just half a mile up the road.
This is the workshop that they have now occupied for the past twelve years.
Originally the whole site had been owned by a Toyota dealership, and what is now the fuel station at the front was then a showroom. When the dealership left, the freehold was divided up: the front of the site became a fuel station and the back, which had been the workshop, was used by Avis as a car hire site. All the plant and machinery used by the Toyota garage had gone and this meant that when Elmwood bought the site they were starting off with an empty building and a clean sheet. They had all the new equipment, including the ramps, tyre-fitting equipment and so on laid out exactly as they wanted it.
The one thing they did inherit in the workshop was the exhaust gas extraction system, and this is a great bonus when the doors are all shut. They equipped the workshop with three two-post ramps and a four-post ramp, as well as the MOT ramp. This has recently been replaced with a new five-tonne ramp in the MOT bay, which was upgraded to allow the testing of camper vans. The business can now carry out class 4, 5, and 7 MOTS, as well as motorcycle class 1 and 2 MOTS.
Meet the team
Clair runs things in the office while
Toby is hands-on in the workshop. Joining him are Peter Croft who has been with him for 19 years and is a fully trained TVR technician, and Alan Wilkinson, a technician who has been there 17 years. Mark Rigney is the MOT tester – and front of house in reception is Megan Spencer, Toby’s daughter, who has been working at the garage for two years now.
Using the KIS online system for vehicle invoicing, they can also take bookings via the website, but any bookings taken this way are confirmed by phone to ensure they know exactly what the vehicle is coming in for. Clair prefers taking telephone bookings because she can ensure the diary does not become overbooked. The garage is open from 8am-6pm Monday to Friday and 9am-1pm on Saturdays.
Clair likes the garage to be seen as female-friendly, believing some allmale garages can be intimidating. With Megan in reception and with Clair there to talk over any mechanical queries in a straightforward way, she feels this helps communicate mechanical problems in a way that any nontechnical customers will understand.
Areas of speciality
As a TVR specialist, looking after TVRS used to be at least 30% of the business but this has reduced to around 20% as TVRS become slightly less common. However, being a TVR specialist does attract quite a few customers of different performance vehicles. Classics and a few rarer American motors are often brought in for attention. Clair and Toby are both dedicated petrolheads and, as well as their own TVR, Toby has a 700bhp Audi RS6, although they use a slightly less powerful smart car for the daily commute to work. Clair also told me that, with petrol in their veins, motoring magazines are their holiday read.
Petrol vehicles are their passion, and although routine servicing and MOT work doesn’t pose a problem, anything too complex on diesel vehicles is dealt with by a diesel specialist who comes in when needed. And although they have completed the hybrid vehicle factory safety course and do service and MOT a few hybrids, they work predominantly with petrol, and like to put all their effort into what they know best – performance petrol vehicles.
The diagnostic equipment Elmwood own includes the Snap-on Verus, Autel and dedicated VAG software. Toby has a strong opinion on having the right tool for the right job at all times, which was clearly evident when I visited – he was using a smoke generator to help track down the source of an air leak on the SEAT Ibiza he was working on. And he confirms that the time saved using this tool to detect manifold air leaks has made it well worth the expense of buying it. Vehicle data and specifications are accessed via Autodata.
With a long-standing regular customer base, Elmwood TVR do not need to advertise and, other than appearing on yell.com and in the local freesheet, they restrict promotion to their Facebook page and the website.
The day I visited, they had just completed a gearbox change on a Ford Transit and had various motors in for servicing and repair. Two of them had management lights showing on the dash, and these were added problems that needed to be solved.
The core of regular customers at Elmwood TVR understand the need for regular servicing, and normally get the service and MOT done on a yearly basis.
As Elmwood TVR do sometimes work on vehicles that are slightly rarer than most, they will allow the customer to supply service parts if they are difficult to obtain, but they won’t use secondhand or major parts supplied by the customer.
Challenges ahead
I asked Clair what the worst aspect of running a workshop was, and she told me that the increasing changes in vehicle technology were making things more difficult: more training and more equipment is needed to keep pace with the changes in technology.
And having to explain to customers that the EML doesn’t just cover one component and can come back on due to a different problem a few months later is a growing problem.