Future of Factory Class
12-22-2003 | 08:02 PM
#21
Guest
Posts: n/a
Frank,
No sir. You are flat wrong. The HP3 was a Super V Light Twin and Single engine first, then we changed our SVL2 to SV and the HP3 was allowed there.
The Mercury 525 we knew was coming and was THE only one of the two that was to be approved for Factory racing.
In fact, we made a proposal to Mercury Racing in August of last year that would have kept them as the exclusive engine provider for Factory class. THEY NEVER EVEN SENT US A REPLY. Right up until the 5pm deadline for us to sign the GM deal at the 2002 Worlds we were begging Mercury Racing to give us some sign of life and they would not even respond. We then signed the GM deal.
We absolutely realized that Mercury Racing could have a negative reaction to our introduction of the GM (NOT GMC) engine and possibly retaliate, but the business case for allowing GM in and having all parties share the same stage and benefit from a strong relationship was much stronger. And we really believed that we and GM could make that case to Mercury.
Look, Mercury buys approximately 70,000 or so engines each year from GM. Mercury Racing takes less than 1000 engines per year. Mercury had adopted the GM 8100 platform already and was selling it as the 496HO. Everyone involved in the project absolutely totally believed that Mercury Racing would ultimately take the 496 as well for its 525 package.
It made perfect sense and still does. The 502 platform is old, inferior technology to the new 496 and since Mercury the parent took the engine it stood to reason Mercury Racing would. Again, still does. The HP3 is every bit as good as the 525 and it is built on the new GM platform that MErcury has already adopted. And its is cheaper than trying to keep the 502 going.
The HP3 was never intended to be a marine engine offered by GM directly to anyone other than their OEM's like MErcury. Our deal with GM has always been about selling cars and trucks. We landed GM as a huge sponsor because we were able to offer them a high performance engine validation program at a fraction of the normal cost while also giving them an opportunity to promote their Vortec engine brand and GM vehicle lineup.
Mercury Racing made this a fight and they flat out did not have to do it.
We showed Mercury Racing the business case for embracing the GMC deal and they refused to listen for no discernible, logical reason.
Think about this Frank: Mercury (not Mercury Racing) is GM Powertrain's largest cutomer. GM has over 300,000 employees worldwide. Brunswick (Mercury's parent) is also a very large company with thousands of employees.
GM supplies roughly 95% of all inboard marine engines and Mercury controls a huge (80+% is my guess) portion of this market. Brunswick boat companies use Mercury (i.e. GM supplied base power) engines.
APBA Offshore is a great marketing environment for the marine industry. GM buys into it as a great marketing environment for their cars and trucks. Are you beginning to see the synergies yet?
For some reason, MErcury/Brunswick has never gotten involved in boat racing. Why not? You have seen the spectator boats at our races. ( By ours I mean SBI, OPA, POPRA, GLSCS, etc.) Most of the spectator boats are NOT performance boats. Many if not most of the boats are Brunswick company pleasure style boats using Mercury (again GM based) power and Mercury drives.
The synergies should be coming even more into focus now.
So, if you are a Brunswick or Mercury executive and GM is investing money into a sport that one of your small business units has been investing in for years, you ought to think - hey, wait a minute, what if we got together with APBA and GM and really created a kick ass, comprehensive, integrated marketing program that involved cooperative advertising and promotions, GMAC financing deals on cars and trucks for Brunswick employees and deals that also promote Brunswick products to GM's 300,000+ employees. We might sell a hell of a lot of boats and engines.
We can offer new and exciting destination oriented customer cruising, excursion, get away programs to Brunswick boat dealers. etc. etc. to help drive boat sales.
Now here is what I want to know: Why the #!@$!@$#@%# would Mercury Racing go out of its way to kick our asses all over the place, piss all over the HP3 and GM's involvement in the sport, pull their support from us only a few months after publicly pledging their undying support for APBA?
If I had a say in Mercury Racing's business planning and I was advising Fred K. I would have told him that the GM sponsorship was a perfect opportunity to grow the sport, grow the market for performance boating, GROW MERCURY RACING SALES, and most importantly, to get my parent company to pick up the costs of marketing and promoting the sport SO I DID NOT HAVE TO!!!!!
Do you understand better now where we "were going with it (GM)", Frank?
You see, if Mercury Racing embraced this program they, we and YOU would benefit and start the sport on the real rise it should have begun years and years ago.
The real question to be asked here is why on earth is Mercury Racing rejecting the program out of hand. Why were our requests for meetings ignored? Why was Mercury Racing pushing GM so hard to dump us?
What are your thoughts on that????
Mike
No sir. You are flat wrong. The HP3 was a Super V Light Twin and Single engine first, then we changed our SVL2 to SV and the HP3 was allowed there.
The Mercury 525 we knew was coming and was THE only one of the two that was to be approved for Factory racing.
In fact, we made a proposal to Mercury Racing in August of last year that would have kept them as the exclusive engine provider for Factory class. THEY NEVER EVEN SENT US A REPLY. Right up until the 5pm deadline for us to sign the GM deal at the 2002 Worlds we were begging Mercury Racing to give us some sign of life and they would not even respond. We then signed the GM deal.
We absolutely realized that Mercury Racing could have a negative reaction to our introduction of the GM (NOT GMC) engine and possibly retaliate, but the business case for allowing GM in and having all parties share the same stage and benefit from a strong relationship was much stronger. And we really believed that we and GM could make that case to Mercury.
Look, Mercury buys approximately 70,000 or so engines each year from GM. Mercury Racing takes less than 1000 engines per year. Mercury had adopted the GM 8100 platform already and was selling it as the 496HO. Everyone involved in the project absolutely totally believed that Mercury Racing would ultimately take the 496 as well for its 525 package.
It made perfect sense and still does. The 502 platform is old, inferior technology to the new 496 and since Mercury the parent took the engine it stood to reason Mercury Racing would. Again, still does. The HP3 is every bit as good as the 525 and it is built on the new GM platform that MErcury has already adopted. And its is cheaper than trying to keep the 502 going.
The HP3 was never intended to be a marine engine offered by GM directly to anyone other than their OEM's like MErcury. Our deal with GM has always been about selling cars and trucks. We landed GM as a huge sponsor because we were able to offer them a high performance engine validation program at a fraction of the normal cost while also giving them an opportunity to promote their Vortec engine brand and GM vehicle lineup.
Mercury Racing made this a fight and they flat out did not have to do it.
We showed Mercury Racing the business case for embracing the GMC deal and they refused to listen for no discernible, logical reason.
Think about this Frank: Mercury (not Mercury Racing) is GM Powertrain's largest cutomer. GM has over 300,000 employees worldwide. Brunswick (Mercury's parent) is also a very large company with thousands of employees.
GM supplies roughly 95% of all inboard marine engines and Mercury controls a huge (80+% is my guess) portion of this market. Brunswick boat companies use Mercury (i.e. GM supplied base power) engines.
APBA Offshore is a great marketing environment for the marine industry. GM buys into it as a great marketing environment for their cars and trucks. Are you beginning to see the synergies yet?
For some reason, MErcury/Brunswick has never gotten involved in boat racing. Why not? You have seen the spectator boats at our races. ( By ours I mean SBI, OPA, POPRA, GLSCS, etc.) Most of the spectator boats are NOT performance boats. Many if not most of the boats are Brunswick company pleasure style boats using Mercury (again GM based) power and Mercury drives.
The synergies should be coming even more into focus now.
So, if you are a Brunswick or Mercury executive and GM is investing money into a sport that one of your small business units has been investing in for years, you ought to think - hey, wait a minute, what if we got together with APBA and GM and really created a kick ass, comprehensive, integrated marketing program that involved cooperative advertising and promotions, GMAC financing deals on cars and trucks for Brunswick employees and deals that also promote Brunswick products to GM's 300,000+ employees. We might sell a hell of a lot of boats and engines.
We can offer new and exciting destination oriented customer cruising, excursion, get away programs to Brunswick boat dealers. etc. etc. to help drive boat sales.
Now here is what I want to know: Why the #!@$!@$#@%# would Mercury Racing go out of its way to kick our asses all over the place, piss all over the HP3 and GM's involvement in the sport, pull their support from us only a few months after publicly pledging their undying support for APBA?
If I had a say in Mercury Racing's business planning and I was advising Fred K. I would have told him that the GM sponsorship was a perfect opportunity to grow the sport, grow the market for performance boating, GROW MERCURY RACING SALES, and most importantly, to get my parent company to pick up the costs of marketing and promoting the sport SO I DID NOT HAVE TO!!!!!
Do you understand better now where we "were going with it (GM)", Frank?
You see, if Mercury Racing embraced this program they, we and YOU would benefit and start the sport on the real rise it should have begun years and years ago.
The real question to be asked here is why on earth is Mercury Racing rejecting the program out of hand. Why were our requests for meetings ignored? Why was Mercury Racing pushing GM so hard to dump us?
What are your thoughts on that????
Mike
12-22-2003 | 08:07 PM
#22
Guest
Posts: n/a
I would not anticipate any support from Mercury.
You could buy the engines anywhere you wanted although we have some dealers who likely would love to offer deals so they could get some 500's and 525's in trade and then resell them.
CRE/Innovation is already in place to handle the program I would not think the sealing and certification costs would change and since we are allowing an upgraded exhaus to pep 'em up and make some noise, I am sure Innovation would make it financially worth everyones' while.
Mike
You could buy the engines anywhere you wanted although we have some dealers who likely would love to offer deals so they could get some 500's and 525's in trade and then resell them.
CRE/Innovation is already in place to handle the program I would not think the sealing and certification costs would change and since we are allowing an upgraded exhaus to pep 'em up and make some noise, I am sure Innovation would make it financially worth everyones' while.
Mike
12-22-2003 | 08:13 PM
#23
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Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 3,086
Likes: 0
Sounds like a great plan.
#5 - 3 year lock on the rules plus 1 full year notice before any rule changes.
#6 $50,000 in escrow so if the LLC breaks the "no rule change" the money get's paid out to the registered teams that setup to conform to these rules.
Factory racing will come back big, great ideas Mike and Steve.
#5 - 3 year lock on the rules plus 1 full year notice before any rule changes.
#6 $50,000 in escrow so if the LLC breaks the "no rule change" the money get's paid out to the registered teams that setup to conform to these rules.
Factory racing will come back big, great ideas Mike and Steve.
12-22-2003 | 08:38 PM
#24
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Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 2,158
Likes: 2
From: Palm Coast,Florida
Is there any possiblity of more places that can apply with APBA in order to seal the motors and alieviate the monopoly that CRE/Innovation has? Plus it would be a great benefit to maybe have a place in the northeast, midwest, and far west to accomodate the racers from those respective areas, and save on shipping costs to Sarasota. Then maybe with the competition the costs of sealing them would come down. Just a thought, but I am probally dreamin
12-22-2003 | 08:43 PM
#25
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 6,306
Likes: 1
From: Lake Lanier - N. Georgia
It sounds like everybody is thinking / working together now. The 525's and 500 efi's are an easy sell. I would consider putting a boat back in F1 if these changes are made and locked in. The bigger boats should not have to carry more weight though. Oh Chit I'm voicing my opinion on F1 and thinking about jumping back in? BH
12-22-2003 | 08:46 PM
#26
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Posts: n/a
Originally posted by F1-00 Racing
Is there any possiblity of more places that can apply with APBA in order to seal the motors and alieviate the monopoly that CRE/Innovation has? Plus it would be a great benefit to maybe have a place in the northeast, midwest, and far west to accomodate the racers from those respective areas, and save on shipping costs to Sarasota. Then maybe with the competition the costs of sealing them would come down. Just a thought, but I am probally dreamin
Is there any possiblity of more places that can apply with APBA in order to seal the motors and alieviate the monopoly that CRE/Innovation has? Plus it would be a great benefit to maybe have a place in the northeast, midwest, and far west to accomodate the racers from those respective areas, and save on shipping costs to Sarasota. Then maybe with the competition the costs of sealing them would come down. Just a thought, but I am probally dreamin
Mike
12-22-2003 | 08:56 PM
#27
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Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 329
Likes: 0
From: Sacramento Ca
Mike A,
As a performance class racer (i.e. take this for what it is worth), this is a good move.
Had this been done a year ago we would have bought an F1 not a P4 boat. The speeds of the F1 for an open canopy drove us to a canopy boat (bat boat).
Randy or any other F1 team, if this change happens I will swap you a 496HO and some $$ for either your 500 EFI or the 525EFI. That way you are set as I have this engine in my pleasure boat (which is exactly the point Mike A is making).
Happy holidays,
Rick Young
SignsForLess P4-99
btw... just curious how long it will be before Outer42 can make a post without bashing WetPits or Peconic. My suggestion, get over it.
As a performance class racer (i.e. take this for what it is worth), this is a good move.
Had this been done a year ago we would have bought an F1 not a P4 boat. The speeds of the F1 for an open canopy drove us to a canopy boat (bat boat).
Randy or any other F1 team, if this change happens I will swap you a 496HO and some $$ for either your 500 EFI or the 525EFI. That way you are set as I have this engine in my pleasure boat (which is exactly the point Mike A is making).
Happy holidays,
Rick Young
SignsForLess P4-99
btw... just curious how long it will be before Outer42 can make a post without bashing WetPits or Peconic. My suggestion, get over it.
12-22-2003 | 09:02 PM
#28
Trim it Up!
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 7,009
Likes: 0
From: F l o r i d a
BC is Brunswick Corp stock symbol
fyi....
Brunswick Corp (BC)
31.96 +0.21 (+0.66%)
as of 12/22/2003 at 04:02PM EST (NYSE Delay: 20 mins.) Manage Alerts
Previous Close Open Volume Day Low Day High
31.75 .....31.75 ......... 341,600... 31.60 ..... 31.99
on 12/19/03 9:31 AM EST on NYSE 9:37 AM EST 3:51 PM EST
Time to sell?
Brunswick Corp (BC)
31.96 +0.21 (+0.66%)
as of 12/22/2003 at 04:02PM EST (NYSE Delay: 20 mins.) Manage Alerts
Previous Close Open Volume Day Low Day High
31.75 .....31.75 ......... 341,600... 31.60 ..... 31.99
on 12/19/03 9:31 AM EST on NYSE 9:37 AM EST 3:51 PM EST
Time to sell?
12-22-2003 | 09:05 PM
#29
Guest
Posts: n/a
Mike A,
Thanks for taking the time to write back,and all the info. I will follow up with Merc for ****s and grins and ask the same questions that you,and I want answers to.I have spoke to a few people at Merc,and got a different version of the story,but you have some good points so I will follow up.
Frank
Koolhand
Thanks for taking the time to write back,and all the info. I will follow up with Merc for ****s and grins and ask the same questions that you,and I want answers to.I have spoke to a few people at Merc,and got a different version of the story,but you have some good points so I will follow up.
Frank
Koolhand
12-22-2003 | 09:14 PM
#30
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 6,306
Likes: 1
From: Lake Lanier - N. Georgia
Maybe it's not to late for Mercury , Fred K , the boycotters , GM and MA to sit down at a neutral site and hammer out these issues. It's time to drop the egos and do some damage repair. It looks like MA has mellowed a bit and IS ALL EARS - BH
