McLaren MP4-12C

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Le besset

I said Mercedes, not Mclaren. 2 seperate entities, One English, One German. Mike Lawrence will make sure you do not forget that.
Read his article on Mercedes-Benz then come back to me and say he reports fairly.

It all stems from a Mercedes launch in 1985, the 190E 2.3 16 valve I believe.

My beef with(some) of his articles stem from the fabrications he passes off as the truth. If it were reuters or the BBC this guy would be in the dole-que for inaccuracies. I'm being polite by calling them "inaccuracies" by the way.

Another classic bit of Lawrence tripe, was the "sacking" of Nick Fry at Mercedes GP not 2 months ago. Of course he deduced this by seeing that Fry was no longer on the board through the business sheet. How did he get the "sacking"
As we can see Nick Fry remains at Mercedes albeit in a less influential capacity.

The story was of course taken down and re-edited.....

Lawrence is great entertainment and I enjoy most of it, but I will not accept he accurate or reliable.

[WhiteBlue]

McLaren and Mercedes is a bit of a difference. Lawrence has written many good pieces but you have to take it in with a pinch of salt when he lectures about McLaren, the holy grail of British sports car revival and Mercedes the evil German industrial empire which is no good in F1 as were Toyota the evil Japanese industrial empire ex Cologne.

Mike is a bit of a fan boy when it comes to the Ronster and is 110% sold on the dream of creating the British Ferrari. I give him some credit for the story with the industrial molding of the tub. They are indeed using an interesting technolgy there, but that is by no means brand new. Unless I'm very mistaken I have seen the process exhibited at the K'2007 in Düsseldorf. The K show is the biggest global trade show on polymer processing technologies and a bunch of companies are using that technology now for prototype applications. McLaren is just one with a fairly big app, which isn't without its risks though.

The MP4-12C by the way is being discussed in great detail here:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7368

would a moderator please join the threads!

Btw, thread titles like "I refuse to beleive it" may be sensational but they do not contribute to a neat and readable forum.

[lebesset]

well , JET , when you started off about a vendetta against mercedes , as mercedes are part owner of the company I presumed you were making that association


and moderator , when I started this thread it was to point out the [to me] surprising age of the F1 ...so it doesn't connect with the MP4-12C thread , that was merely an aside ; perhaps I should have entitled the thread McL F1 , but being british I prefer a more subtle approach , obviously too subtle for some

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

His article on Mercedes is an extreme example of this "vendetta".
Its not a vendetta per se, but it really is an example of a journalist with an axe to grind.
He pretty much sums up Mercedes as "insubstantial and only good for PR".
His words not mine.

He also goes on to say the world had been duped by the "deutschalnd uber alles" machine.

WhiteBlue is aware of Mr Lawrence fascination with Mclaren. It is the reason he sharpened his pencil on Mercedes to glorify his beloved Woking outfit.

Funnily enough, not much was written by Mr Lawrence on Spygate or Liegate.

Thought I would add this balance, somthing Lawrence could do with.....

[gridwalker]

The McLaren F1 had a BMW engine anyway, so I can't see this report being anything to do with a Merc vendetta.

Plus, I remember being in school when the F1 was launched, so 17 years sounds just about right

[segedunum]

On this occasion he doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. It was plain obvious that with McLaren wanting to make their own cars Mercedes were going to be displeased as they would inevitably be in competition, and Mercedes wanted to take over McLaren and turn it into their own Mercedes branded race team and sports car operation. No one needed to say anything for that to be fairly obvious.

The rest of the article is interesting in parts when it talks about the particulars of the car, especially the injection moulded tub. The really interesting thing will be if they can make quality sports cars far cheaper and burst the bubble of the Ferraris and Mercedes of the world and get back to what Lotus were doing all those years ago. I think that's the direction they have to head in because the market is simply overloaded with expensive sports cars, and the climate for buying them is not good.

The article then diverges completely from the subject matter and starts going into a needless rehashing of McLaren's racing hisory in the early eighties with carbon fibre and their own engines. Presumably he wants to get over that McLaren will have no trouble making their own engines without Mercedes. A little nauseating, but subtle enough to be a little clever but he's not so subtle later on. He has a dig at German manufacturing by saying that all of the cool things were invented by small British engineering consultancies, but I can't blame him for that completely.

Although I do like what McLaren are trying to do, other than that, it's a bit heavy on the McLaren worship and his little anecdotes on how he asked McLaren and got answers to try and rub in his closeness to McLaren is a bit nauseating.

I think a thread merge is in order.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Lebesset

No more association with Mclaren, only in name. The shares are in the process of being sold back, papers signed etc.

As I said before Lawrence entertains and is usually okay, but when it comes to being impartial, this guy has to many agendas.

Gridwalker,

Lawrence in general, not just in this particular story.
F1 was a dream machine in a way the Bugatti could never be.

[WhiteBlue]

...and moderator , when I started this thread it was to point out the [to me] surprising age of the F1 ...so it doesn't connect with the MP4-12C thread , that was merely an aside ; perhaps I should have entitled the thread McL F1 , but being british I prefer a more subtle approach , obviously too subtle for some

The first thing the thread did was quoting the Lawrence piece at Pitpass about the MP4-12C and of course any reference to MP4-12C will also look at the F1 because 12C plays on F1 in a big way to use revival to create brand awareness.

lebesset, you do not address the points that were raised. Creating a sensational sounding thread title with no obvious reference to the content is bad practise! And creating a new thread every time something is published about a huge issue like the MP4-12C for McLaren would be silly. We would be repeating the arguments all over every time new bits and bobs come to the surface. There have been at least three huge media initiatives up until now by McLaren to create publicity and there will probably be another two or three before the public will be able to buy and test it. Lawrence's article clearly was a reflection of the "launch" that McLaren did in March. If you think about it honestly you should realize the validity of those points.

Back to the issue I would add from my personal experience with diversification attempts of corporations that there are many risks of failure. Although I'm not a personal fan of Ron Dennis I will admit that the man has a strategic vision and the strength of character to go through with it. Nevertheless an outside reporter as Lawrence should not stop at glorifying the venture but also look at the risks that are attached to the project. Believe me they are still considerable and there is no guarantee that the whole project will not end up like USF1 to the power of 4.

The thing where these projects can stumble is the validity of the marketing plan. As Lawrence pointed out the launch period of the project until they will break even is likely to be close to 10 years. It remains to be seen if this product has the unique attraction to a broad new customer base that is needed for success. And secondly one has to be skeptical if the margins are sufficient to support the huge capital layout and the interest due on it. Indications are that the sales price is already creeping up and we are still a year from the first contract. If McLaren come out with a price that meets the SLS Gullwing then this should be a good price point. But if they do I reckon they still need a 35% margin on that product to pull the venture off successfully and I see a big question mark behind that.

[JohnsonEvilTwin]

WhiteBlue

Thanks for the point of view. I concur with all you wrote, however, I would like to add one thing.

Mike Lawrence has made no mention of the finacial strains McLaren will be under of the next 4-5 years.
£200 million buyout of Mercedes and £50 million (conservative) development cost of the 12C cant have been easy.
Nor is the nigh £200 million they still owe on Foster designed factory.

Thats a lot of debt for Mercedes Benz, Let alone a start up company!

[lebesset]

well , WB , if you don't like thread titles which are too laconic for your taste then you have every right not to click on them

and if you thing that a first line that begins

according to mike lawrence in pitpass the F1 is 17 years old

can then be described as , and I quote you ,

the first thing the thread did was quoting the lawrence piece at pitpass about the MP4-12C

seems to me to be less than accurate
my only reference to the new car was to say that I hadn't put my name down for one , discussion on that vehicle is for another place on this site ....

I happened to glance at the piece referred to and was amazed to find that the F1 was 17 years old ; I felt that other people might also be interested in the fact and decided to bring it to their attention , personally I like a subtle approach hence my choice of headline

this forum is entitled general chat ..to me , the subject of the age of the F1 is just that , no more , no less ...if you wish to have a discussion about the accuracy of mr lawrence's articles , I suggest you start your own thread on the subject

[WhiteBlue]

No big deal. We can agree to disagree.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Lebesset

Mike Lawrence "must read article" as you put it, is just more gushing praise from a Mclaren pooch.
Many people quote Lawrence(incorrectly alot of the time), but my point is, you just raised one of his articles and Im putting some balance to what people may read on the article.


He lambasts Porsche questioning their purity compared to mclaren(only their second fully fledged car) because porsche have built a 4X4.
Such a pathetic comparison its actually funny!

At the start of his 12C piece he has another go at germany in quite an immature way:
"Und now ve introduce Helmut who has fastened more veel nuts on Volkswagen than man in history. Tell us about your life and veel nuts"

You can laugh but he used that little tirade justify why he wasnt at a journo shindig.....

[Pup]

I'm waiting for the next article from JohnsonsEvilTwin, since, undoubtably, it will be perfectly objective.

Just kidding. I don't see the article as 'gushing', though it is a bit of a puff piece. He was clearly wowed by Macca's presentation.

BTW, I think you're confusing Mike Lawrence with Christian Sylt. Sylt is the one who writes all of the sensational 'Mercedes is going out of business tomorrow. Promise." articles. Though I don't think he cares much for McLaren, either.

Lawrence is the one who likes to pick up on something that everyone and their dog already knows, like McLaren one day making their own F1 engine, and then publishing it like he's the only man in the world smart enough to have figured it out.

[WhiteBlue]

Lawrence is the one who likes to pick up on something that everyone and their dog already knows, like McLaren one day making their own F1 engine, and then publishing it like he's the only man in the world smart enough to have figured it out.

Hear, hear! =D>

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Pup youre right

There was some cross insemination of my bile lol

Both are well short of being reliable in my opinion.

I cant seem to find Lawrence piece on Mercedes-Benz. Suffice to say its horrifically biased. Pitpass? Sh##pass at times......

I do get some good enjoyment out of it at times so it aint all bad.
How is our friend ISLAMATRON doing havent seen him in a while