M-Sport Ford World Rally Teams

[Mirek]

I understand R5 is now a tough market and they want the new Fiesta to be the best, but this delay in bringing it out is not good at all.

By the time its ready there wont be that many buyers left that have waited about 18 months more just to buy a Ford.

The Polo may be the new benchmark, but can M-Sport build something even better, and at a good price, with less resources than VW have ? Pretty doubtful.

The C3 R5 will also catch more sales with Østberg boosting its results. And you can be sure Skoda and Hyundai wont be standing still with their cars...

Look at it from the other side - M-Sport is late with the new R5 but it won two WRC titles! For sure the R5 market loss hurts but I'm quite sure that Malcolm Wilson and the rest of M-Sport guys would again go for the WRC title as a priority if they were about to decide again.

[ToughMac]

With so few numbers of the polo being produced maybe Wilson is playing a clever gameplan. As for customers and waiting lists teams will generally go for whats best unless they are brand affiliated. Also bear in mind the fabia evo 2 has also been postponed and not due to be released till mid summer. The Hyundai is still a very basic car and even with the jokers that are planned for this year I feel it will still lag behind the competition.

[Mirek]

Except that it's not few at all. 40 cars/year is pretty high number. Škoda produces twice the amount but among the rest it's currently second highest production rate I believe.

[dodge33cymru]

stories for good night from Wilsons family
http://classic.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/141112

Good interview, thanks for the link. After reading, I'm even more surprised they've not picked a top driver for the WRC2 Pro campaign to advertise the new car.

[ToughMac]

40 does sound like a good number but demand still out weighs production by a big margin. Just for the record, how many new cars did M-Sport and Skoda sell last year?

[dodge33cymru]

40 does sound like a good number but demand still out weighs production by a big margin. Just for the record, how many new cars did M-Sport and Skoda sell last year?

Going by EWRC chassis numbers, about 15-20 Fiestas: https://www.ewrc-results.com/carinfo...a-r5/?car=3173 - a lot of money in the upgrades and rebuilds of the first 200+ chassis though. I think that's more valuable business than the actual initial sales.

[Mirek]

40 does sound like a good number but demand still out weighs production by a big margin. Just for the record, how many new cars did M-Sport and Skoda sell last year?

Not all cars are sold to the customers but the production capacity of Škoda is 80 cars a year and it has been steadily kept so for a couple of years. Based on their comments there are no plans to enlarge the production rate in the future.

I would be carefull to comment the demand. Yes, there is huge demand for Polo but not that much for the other cars. Most of those you can get pretty quickly after the order (including Fabia).

[ToughMac]

That's what I was kind of figuring. M-Sport are a preparations/sales business so it is in their best interest to sell as many cars as possible while also rebuilding older stock. It doesn't seem like anyone else works with M-Sport built cars so its quids in there. Skoda follow pretty much the same format just not as aggressively. VW however don't need to make money from selling Polo R'5 so are not motivated to churn out large numbers. In my opinion it is more of a self sustaining brand awareness exercise and it looks to be doing the trick.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Good interview, thanks for the link. After reading, I'm even more surprised they've not picked a top driver for the WRC2 Pro campaign to advertise the new car.

Maybe Greensmith could do some more WRC drives in the second half of 2019 and M-Sport could then bring in a name driver for the new Fiesta R5 in WRC2 Pro. Depends on how he's doing and his funding.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Look at it from the other side - M-Sport is late with the new R5 but it won two WRC titles! For sure the R5 market loss hurts but I'm quite sure that Malcolm Wilson and the rest of M-Sport guys would again go for the WRC title as a priority if they were about to decide again.

Of course.

I was concerned the business will pay a big price in the long-run for taking their eyes off their R5 , which is their main business. But I think Malcolm knows what he's doing.