OverSquare wrote:[Overlaying McLaren Cars longer term strategy, a McLaren engine seems logical, especially when it is developed to th3 2014 rules.
Ron Dennis has openly stated that his vision for McLaren cars is rival Ferrari. That menas creating an english iconic brand that will last the next 100years. To do that McLaren needs to become completley self sufficient.
Sure selling 10,000 MP4/12c's a year is not going to do it, but he has also stated that McLaren will be introdcing bread and butter sports cars as well. With that I assume he means sports cars in the GBP50,000 region. i.e. cash cows.
This thread is a bit old, but the topic is so relevant - BUMP!
"Overlaying" Me thinks you've hit the proverbial nail on the head for a number of reasons. This is long term strategy so it's interesting to speculate on how McLaren will achieve that goal. I think your assertion, fact, that McLaren is going to be more than a one-car-company pretty much ameliorates (pari parsu) arguments made by others here that McLaren will not be able to afford the program. The question then becomes at what stage does McLaren make this step?
I'm not an mechanical engineer so I can't speak to the costing structure and technical hurdles of developing a 21st century F1 engine, but knowing what I do about program management in high technology world, the learning curve is very steep indeed. In F1 where slight hp/torque advantages return sub-second/lap gains seems to be where the 'experience' and 'data' arguments begin to make sense particularly when one defines the relevant question as not about 'building' an engine but building a 'winning engine'. I will note that that 2014 engine specs seem relatively attainable with 15,000 rmp limit - I know I'm being a little pollyannish given that, as others have noted, it is now about the whole package (blower, kers, etc.).
This is clearly non-trivial and filled with risk.
So this joint development with Ricardo makes sense (is Ron playing the Japanese incremental development game here?). The question in my mind is how does Ron Dennis merge the development effort of Ricardo with McLaren's goal of being self-sufficient? How long will McLaren be willing to be a mid-pack performer until it gets the technology right? If I were the boss, would I want to be out of the gate in 2014 with the rest of the pack with my own engine or do I wait till the technology is more developed by others before jumping in whilst waiting for my retail revenue stream to match the R&D cost of this package? Does self-sufficient mean McLaren only or does it include joint branded type effort with Ricardo?
More speculation appreciated?[/quote]
Could it be that McLaren's long term plan would involve actually buying into Ricardo (in the same way that Merc bought into Ilmor) and eventually taking them over completely?
