Saturday, May 31, 2014

Geely buy Emerald Automotive, and sign an agreement with Proton and by extension Lotus.

I see that Geely and Proton have an agreement in place for co-operation.
The following is taken from a Bernama article.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the national carmaker and Geely were now in discussion stage after signing an agreement of interest on April 22, 2014, witnessed by former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Once again here is a picture of me and Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamed.
Dr. Mahathir is now the Chairman of both Proton and Lotus.
I periodically, remind Dr. Mahathir of my pet project. I would love to get it off the ground.
So I need to bring in investors. His assistance would be most appreciated!
Geely recently bought Emerald Automotive.

I have met some of their executives. They are ex Lotus employees.
The head honcho, AndyTempest, was for a period the CEO of Hawtal Whiting, I was introduced to him briefly by a gentleman called Bill Harrison. I knew Bill well from my time at Ford and met him a few times socially out of work. IMO a nice bloke. He was Director of Engineering (HW) at the time.

I met with both David Tait and Glyn Owen in Malaysia, whilst working for Lotus. David Taitt was there when I left Malaysia. He was invited to my leaving 'Do'. He didn't come as he was under the impression I didn't like him. I have no idea why he would think that.

Lotus tried to buy Hawtal Whiting when David Taitt was head of Lotus Engineering. Rumour (and that is all it was) had it that by obtaining Hawtal Whiting, Lotus also got Andy Tempest. Andy had previously held a senior position in Lotus.

Hawtal Whiting was sold to Wagen who have now ceased trading to the best of my knowledge.

However, Andy, David, Glyn (and Chris Hiett) are all now Geely employees.

Perhaps they will be working with Lotus again in the future... Who knows? I certainly don't!


Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Tun Mahathir, new boss of Lotus and Proton

I see from the Malaysian press that Lotus and Proton have a new Chairman.

I met him personally at ASLI Automotive conference 2010.


I presented my proposal on stage with his Son and Tengku Mahaleel.


Hopefully, his new appointment will be a plus for Proton and Lotus. It would be nice if he adopted my proposal.
Both Lotus and Proton need to do something different. My proposal is different. And in my biased opinion it would be highly successful.

Just what the Doctor ordered so to speak!

HIRE ME.

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Football and Motorsport are businesses, why study at a functioning ground or circuit?


The above video features on my webpage.

UCFB now adverts nationally on SKY sports TV (UK). They obviously have a functioning business with a healthy marketing budget!
My proposal has a parallel philosophy. However, where UCFB concentrate on the business side of things, I feel Motorsport has the opportunity to teach anything from business to law to engineering to sports science to ...

Initially, when I presented the proposal, setting up a campus at a working track, I thought the possibility of being first was a selling point (silly me!).

Now that someone else has started doing it in football, and appear to be succeeding! Perhaps people will see that I am not a complete nutter!

I am not an accountant, however, if you can achieve high numbers of online clients mixed in with you on campus clients I am sure it can work financially.

I don't have figures for a break even point, nor initial funding requirements (sure to be high) however, a long established USA online learning institute (Phoenix) has about 1/2 million students, and has a turnover in the billions. It has on occasion operated on above 10% profit margins. Its clients can afford its fee's because the (USA) government will supply loans for its courses.

I am sure this is the case in many countries. Obviously, this means you have to be a real University based in the country obtaining the student grants.

As campuses are track based at physical locations this in itself requires investment.

However, there are companies out there with Motorsport divisions, producing sports cars who have education as part of their "core" businesses.

They could potentially benefit greatly from this.