Lotus v Lotus

I'll make this as simple as possible.

There will be two teams bearing the Lotus name in Formula 1 next year.

One, following Wednesday's announcement of Lotus Cars' decision to sponsor and eventually buy into what was the Renault team, will be called Lotus Renault. That team will be part-owned by Lotus Cars but their F1 cars will be called Renaults and will use Renault engines.

The other will be called Team Lotus. This one has nothing to do with Lotus Cars (any more - but we'll come back to that in a moment) but their F1 car will be called a Lotus. They will also use, er, Renault engines.

Both teams, it transpires, plan to run their cars in variations of a black and gold livery. This is an attempt to hark back to the historic John Player Special livery made famous by the original Team Lotus in the 1970s and 1980s through great drivers such as Emerson Fittipaldi, Mario Andretti, Ronnie Peterson, Nigel Mansell and Ayrton Senna, and era-defining cars like the Lotus 72 and 79.

It's a commentator's - and journalist's - nightmare and one can only begin to imagine the confusion it will create for those watching.

So what on earth is going on?

The story starts in 2009, when Malaysian businessman Tony Fernandes obtained a multi-year licence from Lotus Cars to use the Lotus name in F1, having persuaded the Malaysian-owned company that an involvement in grand prix racing would be a valuable promotional tool.

Lotus Racing were one of three new teams in F1 in 2010, the others being Virgin and Hispania. All three spent the year close to the back of the grid, but Lotus did establish themselves as convincingly the most competitive.

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In the course of the year, though, Group Lotus's approach to F1 changed, as part of a hugely ambitious refocusing of the company's future plans by chief executive officer Dany Bahar, who formerly worked in the commercial arms of Red Bull F1 and Ferrari.

Bahar, it transpires, was never keen on Lotus granting the licence to Fernandes, and it has become clear through 2010 why - he wanted to take the brand into F1 himself, but in a different way, through an involvement with an established team.

At the Paris Motor Show in October, Bahar announced plans for five new road-car models, expanding Lotus's range by nearly 200%, and has since said Lotus will enter IndyCar racing in the US and race at Le Mans. And now comes a major sponsorship deal with what used to be the Renault F1 team which will, at an undefined point in the future, morph into Lotus part-owning that team.

Fernandes, meanwhile, struck a deal in September to buy the rights to the Team Lotus name from David Hunt, brother of 1976 world champion James. Hunt had bought them when the original Team Lotus collapsed in 1994 after racing in F1 since 1958, during which time it had established itself as one of the sport's most iconic names.

Fernandes' success in buying the name - exclusively revealed by BBC Sport - marked the point at which what had until then been a private dispute between him and Lotus Cars - which is owned by the Malaysian company Proton - broke out into the open.

Following Fernandes's acquisition of the Team Lotus name, Group Lotus claimed that it owned all the rights to the Lotus name - a point of view robustly disputed by Hunt, who points out that Proton have several times tried to buy the Team Lotus name from him without ever being able to conclude a deal.

The dispute got so heated that former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir bin Mohamad stepped in to mediate, but he succeeded only in stopping the ping-pong of press releases. The dispute is now going to the High Court - and it is unlikely to be resolved until next year.

Lotus Cars CEO Dany Bahar and Hollywood actress Sharon Stone at the Paris Motor Show

Bahar (left) launches a new Lotus car with the help of actress Sharon Stone. Photo: Getty

But the disagreement over the ownership of Team Lotus is only one of two ongoing legal cases between Lotus Cars and Fernandes. In the other, Fernandes is suing Lotus Cars for breach of contract over its withdrawal of the licence to use the Lotus name in F1.

That, too, is not expected to be resolved until some time next year.

Both sides, then, have got themselves into a bit of a pickle.

Lotus Cars has struck a deal to promote its brand in F1 through a team that is knocking on the door of breaking into the top three - and which, in Robert Kubica, has one of the finest drivers on the grid.

But it is doing so with a car that is called a Renault - and there is no way out of that one.

Lotus and the team's majority shareholder, the private investment group Genii Capital, cannot change the constructor name assigned to their team because if they do so without the permission of all the other teams they will lose the millions the team earns through Renault's historic achievements in F1, which date back to their entry in 1977.

And guess which team would not agree?

Fernandes, meanwhile, faces the prospect of his team giving free publicity to a company with which he is in two separate legal disputes. And even if he changed the name of the team to something else, his cars would still be called Lotuses.

It is an unsatisfactory situation for all involved - the efforts of both parties will be diluted by a dispute that, for those watching, will create only confusion.

Fernandes is understood to be increasingly confident that he will win the court case over the Team Lotus name. Lotus Cars, for its part, appears not to be overly concerned about the existence of a second team diluting its brand. Their view is that only one of the teams is affiliated with Lotus, and the other one is providing free advertising for it.

In the meantime, questions hang in the air.

Is the end game for Fernandes to sell the Team Lotus brand to Lotus Cars if he succeeds in establishing that he owns it? Can Lotus - and its parent company Proton - sustain such an ambitious programme? And so on.

In the murk, only one thing seems clear - this is only the latest stage in a story that will rumble on for some time to come.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2010/12/lotus_v_lotus.html

Roberto Guerrero Maurício Gugelmin Dan Gurney Hubert Hahne

Update 12/11 channeled roadster p/u Finished!!

 Just got these in today. The Blue Beetle has never been painted and just falling apart from the glue being old. Looks like it will be a fairly easy restoration but I will be using the parts that are missing from the Beetle I redone a while back. I was never real happy with the first one I did because of having to paint it and some fit issues. Now I will be able to build a nice one and will use what I have left over for a custom one in the future. The Boss A Bone is complete, but has several coats of paint that will have to come off. Hopefully it will come apart easy and a couple on days in the Purple power bath will take the paint off. Watch for updates. Thanks for the look and all comments are welcome, Kevin.

 

Source: http://cs.scaleautomag.com/scacs/forums/thread/922265.aspx

Norberto Fontana Azdrubal Fontes Bayardo Carl Forberg Gene Force

LEMANS: Q and A: McNish on new Audi R18

Q & A: McNish on new Audi R18 By Kevin Turner Saturday, December 11th 2010, 06:26 GMT Audi star Allan McNish is one of only two drivers who have driven the German marque's latest Le Mans challenger, the R18. AUTOSPORT caught up with him at the official launch of the closed-top machine to get an insight into the car designed to take on Peugeot Related posts:
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Source: http://doxcar.com/lemans-q-and-a-mcnish-on-new-audi-r18/

Karun Chandhok Alain de Changy Colin Chapman Dave Charlton

Impressions of the newly reissued AMT '25 Ford Model T dbl kit

 I just picked up the latest version of the AMT 1925 Model T Ford double kit.  At first for the twenty bucks, I was a little reluctant because when AMT/ERTL issued the last kit in the late nineties, it neglected to include the coupe body, leaving many people disappointed, including me.  I built up that kit using an old spare roadster body from the parts box (60's model part) so I wouldn't have too many very tempting but non usable spare parts.  Back then a lot of aftermarket companies made "T" bodies to make the kit more complete.

Not this time!!!!  They hit the bullseye with a nice reissued kit, with both bodies and a lot of respect and tribute to the older kit from the sixties.  I checked my history to find it was the fourth AMT Trophy Series Kit issued in 1960, and to me this kits holds up very respectably to today's standard. 50 years later.  

First, the kit tooling is crisp and clean with very little flash and the mold lines are treatable.  The chrome tree is still crowded which to me results in a "less than chrome" sheen, but that didn't bother me, as I do not like the overshiny chrome on some models today. 

This kit was a miracle back then and even today it reflects accurate proportions and reality when looking at the parts and the finished product.  I just finished the roadster pickup from the original 60's kit as a re-do of a disaster I did when I was 12, and there ain't no better depiction of the Model T's looks than on this model.  Even the street rod version is darn faithful to Norm Grabowski's "Kookie" T from the Sunset Strip series in 1960, which was a rage.  

It still comes as the original, but it has a Lincoln engine, a big'un guys, with either a 4 carb setup or a Latham supercharger, but if you have the AMT 32 Fords, AMT 40 Fords, or the AMT/Lindberg 34 pickup, or the AMT 36 Ford, the easy swap is nothing more than a swap and plug and play.  Personally, I like the Buick nailhead from the '40 Ford with 3 deuces for that real classical look.  The hot rod frame is to die for, as is the suicide front end, quick change rear end, and chopped radiator to make the T bucket look perfect, and I mean perfect. 

When you finish making the T bucket street rod, you are left with installing the chopped coupe body on a stock frame, fenders and undercarraige.  This is when some old T bucket bodies from multiple purchases come in.  Build a few of these and the numbers somehow work out. 

I am just completing one I had from the original 60 in which I shortened the frame to make it a true T bucket with no roadster or pickup rear body, and finally found a beer keg type fuel tank for the rear side.  These models are just so darned flexible and good looking, for us street rodders, like with a little kitbashing you can make a full fendered rod from the parts box.  For the full fendered model, I strongly suggest a spare 283 Chevy motor from the Double Dragster kit, which fits under the hood perfectly.

I hope no one buys this kit so I can buy them all!!!!!!  Just kidding.  Once my Christmas shopping is complete, and the bills are paid, I plan to invest in at least 3 - 4 more 25T kits so I don't come up wanting like I did back in 1970, and again in the nineties.   

I did not go into the technical details of the kit, because the kit shows all of the parts drawn on the side and they are a lot!!!

Kudos to AMT 2 or whatever its name is, it is doing one hell of a job with these reissues. 

Heck, I might even spring for the 62 Buick and make it a custom lead sled!!!

Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman

 

Source: http://cs.scaleautomag.com/scacs/forums/thread/927289.aspx

Robin Widdows Eppie Wietzes Mike Wilds Jonathan Williams