[WRC] News & rumours (part III)

[Franky]

Maybe this topic (motorsport and car sales) should be separated to a new thread.

But to answer Jonkka's question. Out of the three I've had only one marque has rallying history, tho that model hasn't/isn't used. And the marque success wasn't decisive when picking it.

But regarding the whole brand awareness I agree with Nornbugger.

[Mirek]

How many of you have a car that is related to WRC or rallying in any way? I do not and I will not - though my wife has had two (Fiesta and now Polo).

It's much more about keeping the brand on the eyes of people as long as possible (and in positive light). For example people from Škoda were very happy about IRC Monte Carlo editions when they had virtually dozens of hour on the Eurosport for a whole week in January when most of motorsport championships are sleeping and people therefore follow RMC. For same reason they have been a partner of long-lasting live events such as Tour de France or World ice hockey championship. Actually the goal in my opinion is to make people who start to think about new car to visit your garage as first. Sure a lot of people will not stay in the first one but certainly the first one will sell the most and that's why it's important to be on the eyes.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Remember the years of Citroen sales success in the decade of Loeb driving the Xsara and C4...

Cant remember the last time I saw either of them on the road and the main sales in the UK were with the Picasso, not exactly a sports car.

[N.O.T]

well F1 cars are driven by girls and followed by overweight crowds in stupid hats and they look like nothing you can buy from the manufacturers involved but the investment there is huge... motorsports is a way for the manufacturers to say "look what we can do" "look what we can achieve" "now go buy a 1.2 litre car than does 1000 miles to the gallon"... the correlation to the sales is not direct but it does affect them.

[N.O.T]

Remember the years of Citroen sales success in the decade of Loeb driving the Xsara and C4...

Cant remember the last time I saw either of them on the road and the main sales in the UK were with the Picasso, not exactly a sports car.

nobody is going to buy the C4 because Loeb raped some sick dogs for years and years... but when the discussion about what car you are going to buy comes up and citroen is within your shortlist you will definately mention their experience in rallying..

[skarderud]

I remember when petter won in 2003, subaru norway upped theire sale with 40% the year after. It has to be with the rallything to do

[Ounin]

Correlation F1 and car sales is almost nothing that is why F1 didn't make sense many years. Due to connection Le Mans cars and the new techniques on road cars and its growing popularity, F1 is in panic now. A lot. Hyundai and Toyota returning back to World Rallying does say a lot; they have a reason for that and of corse it has a lot to do with car sales directly and indirectly. They know what they do, no forummers / amatures like we are

[tommeke_B]

I remember when petter won in 2003, subaru norway upped theire sale with 40% the year after. It has to be with the rallything to do

Of course the story of Subaru is something unique. The whole product branding was built around rallying. You must also keep in mind that back then the economic circumstances were better for buying such a car, I can't believe that something like what Subaru was in the 2000's is still possible today..

From my info rallying does have some impact. For example some time ago I heard that in Belgium Skoda had something like 3,5% market share, while in "rally-regions" (such as the region of Ypres) the market share was up to 5%. However you can't clearly say if rallying is the main influence, it could be because of better dealerships as well. In magazines and on billboards rallying has been used as well here. Especially in car-magazines the big advertising pages are often filled with a rallycar. For example Peugeot BeLux took big advantage of the popularity of Neuville's IRC Program in 2011 for sure the victories in both Corsica and San Remo helped a lot with that. Also Skoda Belgium used the victories of Freddy Loix in Ypres for their advertising. Now in Hyundai dealerships you can see life-size Neuville and Gilsoul in cardboard. For sure some manufacturers exploit rallying, which is good. Advertising is often about being creative, and displaying a rallycar probably draws more attention than the 1000th typical front-side photo of an every-day car.

[KiwiWRCfan]

tweet from Hayden Paddon
"Tonight from 6.40pm on @TV3nz sports news, we will be able to tell you about our 2015 plans"

Hayden is referring to NZ time. It will be 5.40am UK time 6.40am CET
TV3 is one of our main network news programs. I would expect between 3 & 5 minutes on Hayden amongst all the other news. If anyone is interested is seeing the announcement live the following link will be streaming

http://www.3news.co.nz/Video/3NewsLiveStream

[Rallyper]

Audi would have been nothing today if not for the Quattro-concept in rallying, back in the beginning of 80´s. Before that one was laughing at the brand AUDI or (Auto-union).