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Lotus Cars is sold to the Chinese. http://www.rotuscars.com
My simple question is why to people pay in the first place?
Because they can! They have the money, and they want to spend it! And that’s not the whole story! You made one wrong assumption:
Then i realized it comes down to people with money. They don’t care if they get taken a little advantage because it’s nothing for them.
They don’t get taken advantage. Instead, they feel privileged to be able to pay for premium services. It makes them different from the less wealthy. The same thing applies to everything: cars, clothes, houses, accessories. Sure, paying more promises better quality, but what you actually buy is exclusivity.
The worse part comes when the less wealthy want to show off the money they don’t have and opt to get in dept in order to obtain some of the premium products and services.
Still, the worst part comes when the rest, that don’t really need the excess, get “robbed” from some of their little joys (or big needs), just to satisfy the vanity of the “best”.
It’s down to money really. Lotus seem to have the most, so they have more chances to give KERS a try than the rest. If they try it on this year’s car as well, they’ll have more time to debug it ahead of next season.
As for the rest, if HRT has enough cash, Frank may be convinced to let their Dallara use his lowline gearbox & KERS system, while I doubt that Virgin can use a Mercedes sourced KERS…
I was always under the impression that the BGP 001 was a tribute to the RA109. They had to hastily stuff a different engine to it, scrap its KERS (although one can argue that KERS was largely useless during 2009) and try to develop the damn thing without staff and money. Still, they ran away with 2 titles. Did I mention they did little pre-season testing?…
Now, we don’t know how crappier the Honda engine would have been, how much input Rubens had to the setup or, more importantly, how much would the Honda top brass interfere with the day-to-day running of the team…
As Keith said, they probably would have not (though I could wonder how kind would an engineer’s remarks have been towards his ex-employers that, almost, left him without a job).
Still, I believe that they’d probably be very competitive as a Honda works team..
I just read an article at ScarbsF1 stating that Ferrari was not allowed to use exotic materials for their exhaust, so this may not be favoring one team over the other. Still, have a little faith. Engineers are quite inventive and given time, they ‘ll find other solutions!
After all, protesting is cheap! It doesn’t require an army of designers and engineers trying to find ways to recreate and copy intricate and complicated designs in short time frames. No CFD, no wind tunnel testing, no manufacturing costs of new parts and no disruption of development programs, no compromised designs, no further reliability problems.
All protesting needs is a couple of lawyers, a piece of paper and an “outraged” team principal accusing rivals of cheating…
Bernie is just stirring the waters again. This guy has various agendas and everything he says is just a step to fulfill them. I won’t be surprised if in a week’s time he’ll say that all 12 teams are necessary for the sport. Just look at the Melbourne row, one week he says Australia is unnecessary, the next that it’s as important as Monaco! Not to mention that -unless my memory plays tricks on me- last year he also said that Monaco had little value for F1, a statement he retracted after a while!!
I really doubt we should give much thought to everything this guy says. Only his actions are noteworthy.
@pepsiperfect
Yes, you ‘re right… I don’t know anything! And its painfully evident that YOU know!
And since YOU have The Knowledge, I -as a Mclaren fan- am pleading you to share It with Mr Whitmarsh, because judging from this article, he is as ignorant as me about Ron Dennis’s Master Plan To Create The British Ferrari ™.
Cheers Dude.
Why should Mclaren build their own engine and become a “proper” F1 manufacturer, when they are not yet a proper road car manufacturer? Yes, they have the MP4-12C, but no one knows whether it will sell good enough to spawn a range of Mclaren road cars. Their previous attempts didn’t set the market alight, did they?
Not to mention that it would be risky (and stupid) to foot the bills for an F1 engine, when they can always attract a big name car maker to give one to them for free!!!
Stoddart established Minardi USA and raced at the CART championship, before its merger with the IRL. He did try to return with Minardi to F1, but -thankfully- he was not given the FIA approval.
From what I remember, he was a beggar, always asking for more money from everyone involved…
No uni user logins or hotmail accounts here (although, to be fair, I still use them in other sites).
My name actually comes from, a rather retarded, wordplay. It is actually the English transcription of the Greek word “aetos” (eagle) with the letter “t” added in the end, so that the last 4 letters of my handler name form the word tost (Greek for toasted sandwich…). It was first used years ago when I was playing Call of Duty (the 1st one) online, and somehow stuck with me ever since.
As for my avatar, I -unfortunately- couldn’t find a picture featuring a toasted eagle, so I had to settle with a roasted chicken one…
http://images.suite101.com/606312_com_bergersmal.jpg Check out the chunky front end aero!
This Ferrari was the first model car I owned, a present from my parents (together with a benetton one)! I was SO upset they didn’t get me the Mclaren one…
It’s probably still in my parents’ house, gathering dust on a bookshelf.
Well that’s hard!
I’d probably avoid Red Bull as, at some point, someone with an identical car would come along and cry for not having the exact same front wing.
STR is a no-no because 2 other people with similar cars would outpace me in every occasion.
Macca is waaaay too bling for my tastes, so no.
A Ferrari red would be nice, but I’d become arrogant and at some point someone would come along asking me to rip half the stickers off my car, and that could be a hassle…
I wouldn’t opt for Sauber, it looks like a fridge. (The 2011 version comes with fridge magnets as well)
Virgin does look rad. Then again, dressing up as a stewardess doesn’t…
The Renault black is nice. Still, having the name of my company written on the sides, reminds me of commercial vehicles. Not to mention that the thick gold stripes are a bit…
The Lotus green is kinda neat as well, but I can’t picture myself tweeting all day long about the annoying guy riding the black van with the gold letters…
Williams, well its ummm, I don’t know, like an fallen aristocrat. Can’t really brand myself as a has-been.
Force India. No. Just no. I know I’m not cool, but that’s going too far…
That only leaves me with HRT. A nice gunmetal color, not many decals and MOST IMPORTANT: I can go as fast as I want without getting a single ticket! Noone will ever believe I can do more than 20mph. (And remember, due to the complete lack of downforce, HRTs had a decent top speed!)
Exactly what is real? It surely isn’t defined by neither a name nor a paintjob. Chapman’s Team Lotus was famous for certain reasons, with the biggest being their on-track successes, of course! It was the ground breaking ideas, the excellent conceptual engineering, the lightweight (and flimsy!) cars and the high death toll… You may forget it was one of the teams that showed how F1 racing is done, setting the trends everyone followed.
Unless any of the two “new” Lotuses achieves that (while keeping their drivers safe & sound!), they have NO right to claim Chapman’s legacy. They are -at best- dubious marketing exercises.
