How far behind is McLaren ?

....like us?

 

+1


However, not quite the excesses of 10-12 years back......

Agreed!

We'd have 'er fixed by now, fer sure!

Throw up a quick poll or two, get the answers (they'll be unanimous, no doubt!) and let JT know.

Done job.

Cheers,
Ian

 

Are you comparing us to the excesses or the responsible?

Could go either way.

 

The second off course!!! There is no such thing as irresponsable people here !!

 

I'll take your word on that.

 

Thanks for your trust...

 

There is always Cosworth in the background...

They'll have to stick with Honda. In two and half or close to three years, I'm sure Honda
will get there. They surely will need a works team to "test" faster. They were not sure
by 2016, but they may need it by 2017.

Then again, if we look at BMW, it took them 8 years to win, correct? (2000 -> 2008),
albeit they were competitive early on.

 

As we've wandered a little OT here, I reckon this is pretty apropos right now;

"We", the respondents to the recent GPDA survey, can't even agree on refueling......

No surprise they can't agree on anything either...... A "benevolent dictator" is the answer, but we know where that leads.

Cheers,
Ian
No surprises from fan survey - Pitpass.com

 

i don't think refuelling is important, it won't change things for the better nor worse...

 

"I have to lead my people! But first tell me which way are they going"

Governing by poll results in mediocre policy.

 

You surprise me !

It was typical embezzlement involving faulse facturation, etc..
Lotus was contracted as consultant to De Lorean and facturing them huge sums of money for very little work in return. John De Lorean must have been a willing party in this.
The problem was that most of the funds came from a grant from the British government through the Northern Ireland Agency to boost employement in the province.
So it was in fact taxpayers money going straight into Chapman coffers.

The scam was uncovered jusst before Chapman's death. His Finance Chief served a prison term for participating in the fraud.

 

What is wrong with that? This is the business model of consulting firms. Huge sums to tell you what you already know or otherwise very little.

I cannot see why this is considered fraud myself. Sure Lotus was extremely expensive consultants but with governments involved AND consultants of course huge money was going to be wasted!
Pete

 

I'm not very familiarized with the DeLorean story, but as far as I know, Delorean was charged for using part of the money he got from the Government in other of his business. He later claimed that he didn't use Government money, but that he got a loan from Chapman.

I'm guessing that he used Lotus only as an intermediary to divert the Government funds, or even worse, that Lotus produced fake bills and the money never got to Lotus but straight into DeLorean's pockets.

 

You may have a cavalier attitude regarding business fraud, and it's your choice, but in most cases the law courts find something criminal about it and sentence the culprits.

Consultancy doesn't mean ripping off your client. And using consultants just to syphon off money from your business is also punishable by law.

 

Absolutely correct

 

But they do charge like they are possessed, and with no shame. But if you and your company is lost they do have a place ...

How can it be? If you agree to pay X, even if it is 1000 x what X should be, that is your fault. Confused.

No different to buying a car for 10 times what it really is worth. Surely the law does not prevent people from making stupid decisions. That's their fault!
Pete

 

If the extra charge is a trick for shiponing, as it looked to be with DeLorean and Lotus, then indeed it's a problem.

 

Spankings?

All the best,
Andrew.

 

Lotus was hired as an ENGINEERING CONSULTANT, not as business consultant.

Lotus was supposed to supervise the De Lorean design, smooth the rough edges, take it through homologation, etc... the kind of work an carmaker with experience can offer a new venture.
The money transfered from De Lorean to Lotus wasn't justified by the work done, in the eyes of the British government that was footing the bill to an extend, and further investigations did show that several payments in fact were just to cover false invoices; a massive case of fraud.

There is nothing wrong paying a car 10 times what it's worth it it's your own money.
In the case of De Lorean, much of the money was put upfront by the British government as grant or loan, so obviously it has an interest in seeing it spend correctly and obtaining value for money.

I cannot see your angle defending what was a blatant fraud case orchestrated by at least 2 crooks. Any reason?

 

No different, a consultant is a consultant.

The fraud is not whether the money amount was justified or not, but the false invoices. Again, if De Lorean wanted to pay Lotus $20million to help design a single bolt on their car, that is their stupid prorogative. The government should have put processes in the system to ensure their money was well used. Funny how often governments don't do this ... sigh.

Agree, but the time to do that is before you hand over the money by putting in place proper processes. Sounds like something the Australian Labor party IMO would do

The reason is you have incorrectly defined the fraud in your previous posts. The fraud is not that Lotus was paid a small fortune to be the engineering consultant and delivered little (otherwise a large number of huge consulting companies would be being sued for fraud), it was the false invoices.

It is not fraudulent to be really really expensive and to produce little. But yes they got caught and deserved to be.
Pete

 

Governments are not carmakers. However, governments may grant funds to a private enterprise in the framework of an effort to industrialise a region, relocate an enterprise, or boost employment on a particular arae, etc...
The British government endorsed De Lorean's intention to open his plant in Norther Ireland, a particularly deprived area at the time. The government didn't follow De Lorean's operations on a day-to-day basis: no CEO wants civil servants breathing down their neck all the time.

 

In the De Lorean case, collusion was proven between John De Lorean and Lotus.
De Lorean was quite happy, apparently, to be the instrument to transfer funds to Lotus against false invoices.
Not only he wasn't looking after the interest of his company, but he was a willing party in a blatant fraud using public funds.

 

Ron Dennis exclusive: ?This is one of the best McLaren teams ever ? we are going to do it? - Motor Racing - Sport - The Independent

Riiight...

Funny how the questionmarks magically appear in the link

 

Agree on all points, but ... as they are funding with tax payers money they need to put in place some sort of checks BEFORE the money is wasted.

Examples:
1. In Australia the Labor government artificially kept the economy up by spending on infrastructure. Part of that was large hand outs to schools, even schools who did not need a cent (my kids school for example). End result was building work that previously cost N ended up costing 10 x N and the builders were laughing all the way to the bank.

2. Also in Australia the same Labor government used fibre optic broadband as a vote gainer for young people who cannot download (porn?) fast enough. Yes I know there are business benefits but most of the Internet is used for time wasting. Anyway again they did not put in proper checks and processes in place and they ended up with huge cost over runs and no completion dates.

So yes governments don't know how to build cars, school buildings and anything about fibre optics, but they should know how to correctly manage tax payers money. Some of that Irish money should have been spent setting up a department to over see that the De Lorean model was efficient and effective, instead of waiting for the inevitable failure afterwards.

I'm sick and tired of watching inept governments do this over and over again. It is naivity beyond comprehension.
Pete

 

Well, thanks for venting your frustration about Australian politics in our forum about Formula 1 but... what has that got to do with DeLorean and Chapman? The topic was not that DeLorean´s business was a failure and that the Government wasted tax payers´money, but that DeLorean and Chapman were crooks.

P.S: anyway, Chapman and DeLorean are not related to McLaren either.