Gordon Murray joins (Group) Lotus

[raymondu999]

Gordon Murray has just joined Group Lotus; I wonder if this will have any impact on LRGP, with James Allison not doing that great a job right now

[timbo]

Well, he didn't design a racecar for quite a while...

[raymondu999]

He was at McL until 06, and has been working his own consultancy since I believe. Kind of like Pat Symonds is doing now

[xpensive]

I wonder where Murray picked up that kind of corporate bullsh*t?

http://www.autosport.com/news/grapevine.php/id/94138

[raymondu999]

You mean the whole thing about Dany Bahar carrying on Champan's legacy? Maybe the PR guys just wrote a Press Release and Murray just vetted it

[richard_leeds]

Its only an advisory group, he'll not have any exec role.

[raymondu999]

Pat Symonds is a Virgin Racing consultant/advisor. But he's doing quite a bit of hands-on, no?

[richard_leeds]

An advisory broad is usually a corporate governance issue to keep shareholders happy that the board of directors of the parent company are getting advice from some people outside the firm.

Pat Symmonds has been appointed to work with the Virgin racing team, completely different to a corporate advisory broad, even though they both provide advice.

[raymondu999]

Pat Symonds is a consultant to Virgin, not employed internally to Virgin though

[richard_leeds]

Just because two people have a financial arrangements that result in them being called consultants doesn't mean they do similar jobs.

One is on a corporate advisory board for a parent group, the other is acknowledged as having direct input to a racing team. One role typically requires one day per month, the other is a full time job.

[xpensive]

If I was to pay Gordon Murray for his advice, I'm not sure if corporate strategies would be at the very top of my list, which makes me wonder what kind of name-dropping Bahar is getting at, first Senna and now Gordon Murray?

[richard_leeds]

x - Isn't that why a lot of non-execs and people on advisory boards get appointed?

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Edit to add: Murray has been designing road cars since 1991 with McLaren, and his consultancy after he left McLaren has focussed on road cars. He's probably been appointed to add some credibility to Lotus road car brand. We'll see Lotus road cars "designed by Murray" like Newey was supposed to have designed that X1 arcade game

[munudeges]

It's another in a long line of them. Nigel Mansell had a standardised press release written for him saying how much he supported Group Lotus and a similar one was also written for the Chapman family. I wonder how much Bahar paid for them? Is Murray going to design any cars and if not why bother other than trying to name drop in a vain attempt to give you some credibility?

Still, there can't be much longer to go now. The 'company', and I use that term loosely, is haemorrhaging money that it doesn't have and Renault now seems to understand the situation. I don't think Senna was put in the team to name drop but to desperately bring in some Brazilian sponsors.

[marcush.]

Murray wants to sell his production process ,and as far as I know lotus is the perfect candidate to introduce it to the "mass market" I guess selling a licence to Lotus will
fill Gordons pockets enough to see through his own project whicch sad to say it looks horrible...
Not all get better and wiser with age...??? maybe that´s the issue when you are a genius ,in each direction you look it´sbound to be going downhill..

the bespoke manufacturing process is providing very quick turnaround times ,does not use expensive material and is does not need any high investment tooling.Exactly fits bahars book .

[donskar]

PR move, name-dropping, desperation, whatever. Gordon Murray is one of the great names in F1 design. Would love to see him play an active role in F1 again, but not likely to happen. At the moment, IMHO, it is not too great a stretch to describe F1 tech leaders as Gulliver (Newey) and the Lilliputians.