Lactose ignorant
Lee Nian Tjoe
Sunday, 28th June 2009 @ 14:59:22 PM
The idea of "winning on Sunday, selling on Monday" isn't a universal knowledge with carmakers.
How else can you explain Peugeot's utter silence about its recent victory at this year's Le Mans 24 Hours? This is especially significant when you consider how much effort last year's winner expended to broadcast its victory – that was Audi by the way.
Subaru is another stirling example of milking its racing activities at its showrooms.
Subaru, to many, IS WRC. It doesn't matter that its team in the World Rally Championship didn't have a single race win since 2005 in Mexico. Mitsubishi has also been a catatonic failure at WRC prompting them to pull out in 2004. But win-less or not, we still associate the all-wheel drive WRX and Evo with rallying and surly that's a good enough reason to buying one – 'ish.
Incidentally, guess who were the WRC winners in 2005 and the years that followed?
It was Citroen, the sibling company to Peugeot who came in second.
Peugeot pulled out its official WRC team as part of its budget cut. Maybe if they had milked their victories and cash them like Subaru did with the WRX (what did you think the first two alphabets stand for?), rallying and Le Mans can well pay for themselves.