Really good post, Andrew Hope. (Although I would add that the thread seems to be aimed at being fairly light-hearted.)
I think the thing which bugs me most about the type of thing you mention is the pure "wishful thinking" nature of those kind of sentiments. V12s, V10s, blah blah blah. They're not coming back. So there seems little point in even typing such things.
It's like football fans who have a wishlist of transfers for their team e.g sell player X for £30m, sell player Y for £10m, buy player A for £20m, buy player B for £5m. All the while overvaluing their own players worth and undervaluing the proposed incoming player's worth. And ignoring variables such as a player might not be for sale, might not want to join this proposed new club.
Back to F1. I really share your point about teams. These new engines were supposed to appeal to the major car maufacturers. Well, Honda are back next year supplying engines. So hopefully, we'll at some point see another manufacturer or two appear. And if we get really lucky, a new works team in full. Who wouldn't want to see, say, Audi F1, Porsche F1, Volkswagen F1? Or a return to F1 of old names such as Aston Martin? Maybe none of this will happen but I'd rather see such a thing than, as you say, the return of Minardi.
Aside from the fact that my favourite driver is looking good this year, I'd love to see Mercedes' name attached to more driver and constructor championships. Even when Hamilton was at McLaren, when he wasn't winning, I hoped the Mercs would. We've only really had Ferrari as a works team winner in recent times. I think I was one of the minority who really liked Jaguar (although they weren't really Jaguar as such) in F1. Yeah the privateer teams have a lot of romance and support but why not a period of F1 manufacturer/works team battles for a while?
Edited by LewDaMan, 06 May 2014 - 14:37.