RE: Ferdinand Piech interview/article in Fortune magazine...

["Dave Eaton" <Dave.Eaton@clear.net.nz>]

yes, there has been a fair bit of "discussion" in the press recently.
apparently world rallying is a "working class" sport now (probably due to
the "hands on" nature of the spectators), and so is fit for the likes of
ford, toyota, mitsubishi, peugeot and seat/skoda.  other branches of
motorsport are more elitist and so are to be competed for by bmw, audi,
jaguar, honda etc.  this is certainly ford's rationale behind the possible
rebadging of the f1 effort with stewart to jaguar, and seems to be the
reason why audi will never compete in international rallying again.

while i love rallying and always will, and prefer the 3-day pilgrimage to
that involved with f1 (which although exciting, seems to be rarely spectated
by the real enthusiast), i also can't fault the marketing analysis being
used.  as i guess the plans of many of us to go to le mans this year
attest....

dave
'95 rs2
'90 ur-q

> -----Original Message-----
> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 22:03:36 -0500 (EST)
> From: Dan Simoes <dans@ans.net>
> Subject: Re: Ferdinand Piech interview/article in Fortune magazine...
>
> One interesting comment was that Herr Piech views the VW family
> as two distinct trees:
>
> Luxury: Skoda -> VW -> Bentley
> Sporty: Seat -> Audi -> Lamborghini
>
> Writing from memory, but I think that's correct.
> They definitely intend to move VW upmarket to take Mercedes
> head on.  BMW is tagged as Audi's rival.