Senna at Geneva
Discussion
Ferruccio said:
No business that seeks to exploit its customer ever really succeeds long term.
McLaren Automotive seem to rely (or not really?) on a customer base with enough resources who can afford not to care too much about resale value... a venture smilar to what TVR used to be, only quite a bit scaled up, and if/once the main funder(s) will pull out we will see if McLaren Automotive have done their work and built an industrial tool that will allow relative self-sufficiency and establish the brand as a pertinent, sustainable car maker.Thom said:
Indeed they did. However, managing the technical diversity involved with two gearbox set ups for a single model has a cost, and while it is certainly offset somewhere else, they could have simply maintained the dual clutch gearbox and have sat on a possibly insignificant share of the market's demands to push their profits even further. However it seems they decided to go the other way around and even if the car is obviously faster with the dual clutch, who wants to have a faster car if it's a less involving drive?
That they came back to the manual gearbox is actually more respectable than if they had just stayed with it without even trying the sequential 'box. They tried something and learned a lesson - of course considering that learning that lesson saw all parties involved satisfied.
With McLaren we have an impressive turn around of new models with an after sale service that apparently is not quite up to par with the cars' performance. That does not send quite the right signals on the brand's possible ambitions as establishing itself as a credible long term industrial statement similar to Porsche who are probably the closest in terms of "image efficiency". I know all to well how it's like to "run after the train" with buoyant project managers playing with too much resource, wild ideas and who are all too happy not having to build a proper industrial process which are essential bases to avoid the potentialy massive short term losses wealthy investors with little to no industrial awareness do not (want to) hear much about. I'm afraid McLaren are in a similar boat at the moment and I certainly do wish them to build the said bases to build a proper long term image as a serious brand with a reasonably high industrial output within the market it is playing in. If you are confident in your product you invest in it instead of pretending to restart from a blanksheet at every new iteration... which is what Porsche did with the 911. Too many novelties too quickly kill the novelty, and if I were to swallow the depreciation of a new McLaren that will be superceded by another even faster one 6 months later then I'd probably feel quite a bit more frustrated than with a Bristol regardless of the driving experience
Also I'm not exactly sure I understand how it can be accepted that such an "exclusive" brand may give that little value to the hard earned cash of its customers.
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Before the bubble which has been around for about the last 5 years virtually all brands with maybe the exception of some Ferraris sold depreciating cars, because Mclaren are new they haven't managed to surf this current bubble so their cars depreciate like every other non bubble car out there. Pre bubble people who could afford expensive cars knew that they were in for a 20%+ pa depreciation hit and that helped determine the demand for the cars, I think Mclaren have sold cars like the 675s off the back of the bubble with owners, many of whom can't actually afford a depreciating 300K car, moaning away because they expected Porsche GT bubble like residuals.That they came back to the manual gearbox is actually more respectable than if they had just stayed with it without even trying the sequential 'box. They tried something and learned a lesson - of course considering that learning that lesson saw all parties involved satisfied.
With McLaren we have an impressive turn around of new models with an after sale service that apparently is not quite up to par with the cars' performance. That does not send quite the right signals on the brand's possible ambitions as establishing itself as a credible long term industrial statement similar to Porsche who are probably the closest in terms of "image efficiency". I know all to well how it's like to "run after the train" with buoyant project managers playing with too much resource, wild ideas and who are all too happy not having to build a proper industrial process which are essential bases to avoid the potentialy massive short term losses wealthy investors with little to no industrial awareness do not (want to) hear much about. I'm afraid McLaren are in a similar boat at the moment and I certainly do wish them to build the said bases to build a proper long term image as a serious brand with a reasonably high industrial output within the market it is playing in. If you are confident in your product you invest in it instead of pretending to restart from a blanksheet at every new iteration... which is what Porsche did with the 911. Too many novelties too quickly kill the novelty, and if I were to swallow the depreciation of a new McLaren that will be superceded by another even faster one 6 months later then I'd probably feel quite a bit more frustrated than with a Bristol regardless of the driving experience
Also I'm not exactly sure I understand how it can be accepted that such an "exclusive" brand may give that little value to the hard earned cash of its customers.
]
The fact is Mclaren makes THE best sports cars in their market segments and when depreciation returns across the board they will maintain their market share on the merit of the cars, what is quite worrying is that the overall demand for these types of sports cars is going to be massively less when normal historic depreciation returns and when/if interest rates increase. I said all that without saying "industrial" once, used bubble instead
Edited by TB993tt on Friday 16th March 12:10
TB993tt said:
The fact is Mclaren makes THE best sports cars in their market segments and when depreciation returns across the board they will maintain their market share on the merit of the cars
They certainly tick all the right boxes of the folks who consider them the "best" but being the "best" for quantitative reasons has apparently not made them outsell (yet) their competitors who supposedly make lesser cars. This irrationality is why some apparently still prefer to buy Ferraris and indirectly cause values of used, sometimes barely run in, "vastly superior" McLarens to plummet.Now don't get me wrong, I wish them well over the long term, but for cold-pissing folks like me, a brand with no apparent long term vision or mostly respectable after sale performance does not tick all the right boxes. Let's see how things unfold 10 years from here once their clearly unequalled progress to the top has settled somehow and if they will have consistently taken a significant share of the market for the right reasons, and that will not be by reaching a point where the average super car customer will need a chip implemented into their brain to manage the impossible speeds at which the cars could possibly be driven in the real world.
Thom said:
They certainly tick all the right boxes of the folks who consider them the "best" but being the "best" for quantitative reasons has apparently not made them outsell (yet) their competitors who supposedly make lesser cars. This irrationality is why some apparently still prefer to buy Ferraris and indirectly cause values of used, sometimes barely run in, "vastly superior" McLarens to plummet.
Now don't get me wrong, I wish them well over the long term, but for cold-pissing folks like me, a brand with no apparent long term vision or mostly respectable after sale performance does not tick all the right boxes. Let's see how things unfold 10 years from here once their clearly unequalled progress to the top has settled somehow and if they will have consistently taken a significant share of the market for the right reasons, and that will not be by reaching a point where the average super car customer will need a chip implemented into their brain to manage the impossible speeds at which the cars could possibly be driven in the real world.
Are you an accountant by any chance? The McLaren brand vision is very clear, focused on building superbly engineered cars made in Britain which out perform long established German and Italian competitors. Ferrari's brand seems to me to be more about selling baseball caps, T-shirts and theme park tickets with key brand values of posing, cheating and brown nosing dealers Now don't get me wrong, I wish them well over the long term, but for cold-pissing folks like me, a brand with no apparent long term vision or mostly respectable after sale performance does not tick all the right boxes. Let's see how things unfold 10 years from here once their clearly unequalled progress to the top has settled somehow and if they will have consistently taken a significant share of the market for the right reasons, and that will not be by reaching a point where the average super car customer will need a chip implemented into their brain to manage the impossible speeds at which the cars could possibly be driven in the real world.
As for depreciation, it will all normalise once interest rates rise and QE unwinds, the bubble is going to burst
flemke said:
Quickmoose said:
I do..... and good for you 
A well regarded marque making a limited run showy-off thing to maintain it's perceived best in class stature.....something 'the market' has been gorging on for a decent period now..... mmmm risky
With respect, are you saying anything other than that a company is making a product that you don't like? Most of us could say that about most companies. A well regarded marque making a limited run showy-off thing to maintain it's perceived best in class stature.....something 'the market' has been gorging on for a decent period now..... mmmm risky
Regarding the products themselves (as opposed to acting with integrity - a difference subject), I cannot see what is wrong with a company making things that I don't like, so long as they or somebody else will also make things that I do like.
flemke said:
Quickmoose said:
I do..... and good for you
A well regarded marque making a limited run showy-off thing to maintain it's perceived best in class stature.....something 'the market' has been gorging on for a decent period now..... mmmm risky
With respect, are you saying anything other than that a company is making a product that you don't like? Most of us could say that about most companies. A well regarded marque making a limited run showy-off thing to maintain it's perceived best in class stature.....something 'the market' has been gorging on for a decent period now..... mmmm risky
Regarding the products themselves (as opposed to acting with integrity - a difference subject), I cannot see what is wrong with a company making things that I don't like, so long as they or somebody else will also make things that I do like.
Seriously though any car costing a million or more should not be designed in a way that it gets criticised by the masses as looking ugly! and this is PIG UGLY IMO. Surely you can make a car effective and asthetically pleasing to the eye. If this thing doesn’t trounce everything around a track it will be embarrassing, very embarrassing !
Juno said:
Seriously though any car costing a million or more should not be designed in a way that it gets criticised by the masses as looking ugly! and this is PIG UGLY IMO. Surely you can make a car effective and asthetically pleasing to the eye. If this thing doesn’t trounce everything around a track it will be embarrassing, very embarrassing !
Agreed....and even if it does.... one day it will get trounced by something that looks better....that's the good thing about progress, it never stops.
Juno said:
Seriously though any car costing a million or more should not be designed in a way that it gets criticised by the masses as looking ugly! and this is PIG UGLY IMO. Surely you can make a car effective and asthetically pleasing to the eye. If this thing doesn’t trounce everything around a track it will be embarrassing, very embarrassing !
don't forget that looks can be subjective and that in the future everyone might think the Senna looks good - a unique design tends to age less tooWCZ said:
Juno said:
Seriously though any car costing a million or more should not be designed in a way that it gets criticised by the masses as looking ugly! and this is PIG UGLY IMO. Surely you can make a car effective and asthetically pleasing to the eye. If this thing doesn’t trounce everything around a track it will be embarrassing, very embarrassing !
don't forget that looks can be subjective and that in the future everyone might think the Senna looks good - a unique design tends to age less tooIn this instance the majority view appears to be that it is awful....column inches are column inches and like Bangle at BM, long heated discussion whatever the outcome is a good thing.... as lovely as the Pista is.... nowhere near as much frenzy about that...
But as you point out history will leave it's own mark and years to come who knows...
The Alfa SZ became coveted almost purely down to it be a challenging thing to look at...although that had an actual designer along with a marque...
WCZ said:
don't forget that looks can be subjective and that in the future everyone might think the Senna looks good - a unique design tends to age less too
I'd maybe disagree, but only for reasons of personal subjectivity. For me, something like the McLaren F1 is an amazing design because it's so clean, simple and fresh. To use a cliché, it looks like it could've first appeared yesterday, today or tomorrow. (Same with the Jaguar XJ220.) But then to contrast with something much more modern - the BMW i8 to my eyes will date horribly because it's such a fussy mess of a shape. I also think that the Senna faces the same aesthetic problems.Quickmoose said:
WCZ said:
Juno said:
Seriously though any car costing a million or more should not be designed in a way that it gets criticised by the masses as looking ugly! and this is PIG UGLY IMO. Surely you can make a car effective and asthetically pleasing to the eye. If this thing doesn’t trounce everything around a track it will be embarrassing, very embarrassing !
don't forget that looks can be subjective and that in the future everyone might think the Senna looks good - a unique design tends to age less tooIn this instance the majority view appears to be that it is awful....column inches are column inches and like Bangle at BM, long heated discussion whatever the outcome is a good thing.... as lovely as the Pista is.... nowhere near as much frenzy about that...
The market however is driven by personal taste.
Quickmoose said:
But as you point out history will leave it's own mark and years to come who knows...
The Alfa SZ became coveted almost purely down to it be a challenging thing to look at...although that had an actual designer along with a marque...
The SZ is a good example: a design that is so idiosyncratic that it will always attract an enthusiastic if narrow following. Other examples might be the Countach, Testarossa, M3 Breadvan, and Koenigsegg. None of them is a looker, but none will ever be confused with a different car.The Alfa SZ became coveted almost purely down to it be a challenging thing to look at...although that had an actual designer along with a marque...
This same factor will, I expect, support interest in the P15 in the longer term, after another "road car" is proved to be faster around a circuit.
The general consensus (read - public - non-owners) 'judgement' is based on 'taste'
There is detailed judgement out there from the specifc (read reviewers, pilots etc)...who make a more objective view... but still the 'obvious' is always commented upon.
There can be little argument that the aesthetics of the car are bad.... there may be one or two that prefer the anti-norm of it...
The argument/discussion comes from the reasons why...
and I'm not going into that again
There is detailed judgement out there from the specifc (read reviewers, pilots etc)...who make a more objective view... but still the 'obvious' is always commented upon.
There can be little argument that the aesthetics of the car are bad.... there may be one or two that prefer the anti-norm of it...
The argument/discussion comes from the reasons why...
and I'm not going into that again
Quickmoose said:
The general consensus (read - public - non-owners) 'judgement' is based on 'taste'
There is detailed judgement out there from the specifc (read reviewers, pilots etc)...who make a more objective view... but still the 'obvious' is always commented upon.
There can be little argument that the aesthetics of the car are bad.... there may be one or two that prefer the anti-norm of it...
The argument/discussion comes from the reasons why...
and I'm not going into that again
You have to admit it, you LOVE talking about this car.There is detailed judgement out there from the specifc (read reviewers, pilots etc)...who make a more objective view... but still the 'obvious' is always commented upon.
There can be little argument that the aesthetics of the car are bad.... there may be one or two that prefer the anti-norm of it...
The argument/discussion comes from the reasons why...
and I'm not going into that again
Quickmoose said:
The general consensus (read - public - non-owners) 'judgement' is based on 'taste'
There is detailed judgement out there from the specifc (read reviewers, pilots etc)...who make a more objective view... but still the 'obvious' is always commented upon.
There can be little argument that the aesthetics of the car are bad.... there may be one or two that prefer the anti-norm of it...
The argument/discussion comes from the reasons why...
and I'm not going into that again
Aesthetic opinions from car reviewers (drivers and engineers) are no better than opinions taken randomly from the public. People who know something about design should have judgment. Judgment might be affected by personal taste, but it is more substantial than taste alone.There is detailed judgement out there from the specifc (read reviewers, pilots etc)...who make a more objective view... but still the 'obvious' is always commented upon.
There can be little argument that the aesthetics of the car are bad.... there may be one or two that prefer the anti-norm of it...
The argument/discussion comes from the reasons why...
and I'm not going into that again
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