31 replies to this topic

[Megatron]

OK, lets see.....

For years, Ford was the dominant engine in F1, but wait, its not really a true Ford because it was built by Cosworth, that is until 1998 when Ford bought Cosworth, so it really is a Ford. That is until Ford bought the Stewart team and renamed it Jaguar, but its not really a Jaguar because it is ran by Ford, and thier customer engines were orignally Ford, but built by Cosworth, but decided to dump thier customers, so Minardi badged it a Fondmetal, that is until Minardi got bought out and now they are a European, but it is really a Ford, or is it a Cosworth?

And Ferrari. Its not really a Ferrari, it is an Acer, or a Petronas, they are different names, but equal spec engines, but they are supplied by Ferrari. Got it?

Anyone else find this a little phoney?

Tune in next time for the equally confusing Renault/Renault Sport/Mecachrome/Supertec/Playlife stituation.

[Hooster]

Mercedes/Ilmore Yes, its phoney.

[Max Torque]

Megatron, you forgot to mention the BMW engines that were badged as... Megatron!

[andy_bee]

I think megatron was the first evidence of Badging!

[Spot]

What about Lancias being run as Ferraris in the '50's? That's gotta be the first example of badge engineering in F1.

[DangerMouse]

Spot indeed – Ferrari did run Lancias!

I can’t see a problem with rebadging though. There are only a handful of companies that actually make washing machines and CD drives, the rest of the industry buys components and repackages them!

Without the funding by Ford, Cosworth would still be a little shed based company!

Similarly Ilmor have grown massively from Merc cash! That business I suppose.

What about CART? No-one makes their own chassis, does that make CART a farce? Of course not.

Without this “badge engineering” there would be quite a few team missing from the grid today!

[mono-posto]

Yes but they were called Lancia-Ferrari D50's, so that's not really rebadging.

I have no problem with this rebadging maze. It's only a name. I would like to see Ferrari supply Minardi with engines and have them rebadged as Maserati's.

[John]

Badging is one way of differentiating a customer engine from a works supply. It also allows the companies that pay exhorbitant amounts of cash for the rights to use the engines to advertise their names. Money makes the world go 'round you know.

I'm indifferent to rebadging after the Renault/Mecachrome/Supertec fiasco. That carried it rather far, yes, and it did seem phony. But when you get to the bottom of it, it means that F1 teams get engines of a known quantity and it is interesting to compare the known quantities, as we all love to do.

On one hand it creates more rivalry between teams, but it could dilute competitiveness from a larger perspective.

[Greg L]

You're right, John, but I think the Acer Prost takes it a bit too far. It's named after a computer company, for god sakes. Is a Coca-Cola powered Toyota next in 2002?

[rek]

Originally posted by Greg L
You're right, John, but I think the Acer Prost takes it a bit too far. It's named after a computer company, for god sakes. Is a Coca-Cola powered Toyota next in 2002?

What about the Benetton-Playlife ???

[John]

Greg L,
The Japanese are very resourceful and technologically advanced.
If the FIA allowed it, I bet you could power SOMETHING on Coca-Cola, if not the driver!

But I see the point, and yes, it is ridiculous.

[Greg L]

I think you're right, rek, the Playlife probably takes the cake!

[tifosi]

Rebadging also lets companies like Honda "rebadge" their engines, naming them Mugen while they are not competitive, and then when they are becoming competitive again they start calling them Honda again. That way they can point to how succesful they are, since during the years they were crap, they weren't Honda. There is no real difference in the engine in the back of the McClaren now as when it was called Ilmor. But Mercedes waited until that engine became succesful then put their name on the valve covers. Oh I'm so impressed.

[Max Torque]

But the Mugen-Honda wasn't a rebadge. Rebadge of what? Of the old 1992 McLaren engine?! It was a different engine. And even if it was a Honda, if you looked at the Mugen powered cars (Ligier, Jordan) you would notice that they indeed had Honda signs on them, albeit smaller than those of the works deals. No-one was hiding in this occasion.

[Singing in the rain]

A tiny bit OT, but who owns Cosworth these days? Audi/VW bought Cosworth a few years ago, right? Or was that just part of Cosworth and not the F1-engine team?
Heard on the news the other day that Audi has plans for F1.
Hmm, European-Minardi-Lamborghini?

[Mrv]

Is there a Pentium 4 in the Prost? With the results from Melbourne looks like Acer was running a 486 instead.

[tifosi]

Mrv

LMFAO

[cartfan]

Originally posted by Greg L
You're right, John, but I think the Acer Prost takes it a bit too far. It's named after a computer company, for god sakes. Is a C oca-Cola powered Toyota next in 2002?

In my eyes the engine of choice would have to be the Asiatech.

[cartfan]

Originally posted by Singing in the rain
A tiny bit OT, but who owns Cosworth these days? Audi/VW bought Cosworth a few years ago, right? Or was that just part of Cosworth and not the F1-engine team?
Heard on the news the other day that Audi has plans for F1.
Hmm, European-Minardi-Lamborghini?

If I am not mistaken Ford is still the owner of Cosworth.I also read that Audi is looking at CART.But the real exciting news is that Mack trucks is looking at producing an engine for Nascar! After all those cup cars are not that much smaller than Mack trucks....are they?
All you Nascar fans take it easy,it was just a joke.

[MattFoster]

mrv

[Mrv]

Or maybe the Windows software on the Prost crashed. Runtime error. Damn blue screen.

[Dimo]

I think part of it is trying to give the semblance of an "arms length" arrangement.

It's done all the time in the business world...IBM does it often. They created offshoots like Celestica to sell components because their competitors wouldn't buy parts directly from IBM itself.

Similarly a "Sauber Ferrari" or a "Prost Ferrari" would make it sound like Luca's got 6 cars on the grid. Every time a Mac was held up by a Prost it would be because the driver was helping his Ferrari teammate.

I know I'm stretching this a bit, and that any semi-lucid F1 fan knows where engines are sourced, but I think this does have something to do with it.

[MN]

Originally posted by tifosi
Rebadging also lets companies like Honda "rebadge" their engines, naming them Mugen while they are not competitive, and then when they are becoming competitive again they start calling them Honda again. That way they can point to how succesful they are, since during the years they were crap, they weren't Honda. ......

HONDA and MUGEN are two different companies.
Honda officially withdrew from F1 at end of the 1992 season and returned last year.
MUGEN and HONDA are close each other since MUGEN was found by Soichiro Honda's son Hirotoshi Honda.
1993 ~ 1999 Mugen-Honda engines are NOT HONDA WORKS engines.

Honda's 71 F1 win record does not include Prost-Mugen-Honda win.
Honda's 53 CART wins got nothing to do with Mugen.
Honda's close to 500 wins in motor cycle racing got nothing to do with Mugen.

[Jac Man]

Doesn't Mugen produce, and sell aftermarket performance parts for Honda engines, etc.?

[david_martin]

Originally posted by Singing in the rain
A tiny bit OT, but who owns Cosworth these days? Audi/VW bought Cosworth a few years ago, right? Or was that just part of Cosworth and not the F1-engine team?

Confusingly there are now two Cosworth companies, a road car engineering concern (called Cosworth Engineering) and a racing component concern (just Cosworth). Vickers, the orginal parent company sold off Cosworth Engineering to VAG, and Cosworth to Ford.

[david_martin]

Originally posted by Jac Man
Doesn't Mugen produce, and sell aftermarket performance parts for Honda engines, etc.?

Yep a separate company. It is a bit like Toms is to Toyota, or AMG was to Mercedes (before Daimler-Chrysler bought them out). One of Mr Honda Snr's sons started Mugen as the "official" aftermarket tuning and performance partner to the Honda factory. They have a very large race department, doing a lot of F3000 and F3 engines (F2 in the old days too IIRC), prepare holomogation parts for Hondas tin top racing cars, and engine and body kits and limited run specials of Honda road models.

[desmo]

Mugen has also done a bunch of bits for Honda motorcycles particularly MXers over the years. The line between Honda and Mugen is a bit blurred.

[tifosi]

Yeah, OK MN, your missing my point, but its not something to argue about. Honda just came to mind because their the most recent example of companies that slip in and out of F1 depending on how they are doing. To a team like Honda its all a marketing thing like the NASCAR companies. You are really going to seriously tell me that all those years of Mugen that Honda was just sitting back and ignoring F1. No, that is stupid. Mugen exists for one reason and ONE reason only, to provide Honda with a way to do research and development without putting their precious little "name" on the line since they cannot compete consistently year end-year out, good times and bad.


Same as Mercedec-Ilmor. Watch how fast that Jaguar becomes a Ford if it starts winning.

[MN]

Originally posted by tifosi
..... To a team like Honda its all a marketing thing like the NASCAR companies. ......

Marketing thing will be one reason for sure but racing is kinda tradition in Honda. Too bad they withdrew from F1 a few times.
They may stay in F1 a bit longer this time though since they have created two new companies.
One in UK "Honda Racing Development" and another in US "Honda Performance Development Inc.".
Needless to say one to support 2 teams 4 cars in F1 and another to support 5 teams 9 cars in CART.

Racing is also Honda's technical school for their inhouse engineers.
Most of Honda F1 old boys don't like Honda's racing policy because they can only stay in programm for four years and if you have racing engine experience already then you can not even join them.

[goGoGene]

Originally posted by Hooster
Mercedes/Ilmore Yes, its phoney.

Did anyone read this months Wired magazine. There is an article about F1, it's pretty good. And it has a visit to Stuttgart, where the writer is given a tour of the facilities, and it shows pictures of the Merc test lab that the Merc/Ilm v-10 is dyno'd in. There is a great picture of the glowing red v-10 on the dyno. I think this shows that Merc isn't just paying Ilmore, they are actively involved in the development and testing of the engine.

ggg

[tifosi]

MN,

I hope your right. I have nothing against Honda really. I was really hoping they were going to actually enter Formula One as a constructor, as it would be nice for somebody other than Ferrari to compete.

It just gets a little tiring sometimes looking at some companies claiming great success records when they only compete when they are ready, while other teams compete continuously.

It's like Ford in the sixties with their sports car program. Spend years and countless dollars building and doing R&D, without the cost or time consumed in actually racing, then when everything is perfect, come in, wipe the face of the planet clean, and scurry away like a dog with its tail between its legs when the competition gets too tough.

Again nothing against Honda personally, their just the most recent example. I guess we could say the same for Renault, and I'm sure that engine Ron Denis has will become an Ilmor as soon as its out of the points.

[Schummy]

Yes, I find mega-manufacters rebadging a bit tiresome and hollow. One of my favourites is Ford buying Stewart and naming it Jaguar. For god sake! These supposedly Jaguars don't have nothing to do with the real racing Jaguar tradition. They want just create, in a by-pass way, a sort of "Ferrari" name for Ford sales/prestige. I admire, though, the road Jaguars, they have continuity and logic.

And those "Cadillacs", "Bentley"(!!) sportcars? I don't think these names have a logic rigth now. I respect Panoz cars because they are real and "authentic" names for real cars made for racing (and maybe commercial interest, no problem). The same respect for Audi, BMW, Porsche, McLaren,... many brands.

I like all those cars I mentioned, I just dislike the rebadging play of manufacturers.

I don't think "authenticity" and "legacy" can be bought with money. I'd like they let the historical names where they were.