Charity Book, and Jobs (Matchtech)

Today, I received an email from Matchtech.
peter.fisher@matchtech.com or call 01489 898239 if you would be interested.
Looks like Aston Martin are looking body and chassis people.
I sent Peter my CV. I don't match all the criteria. I told Peter I would mention the jobs on my blog.

More importantly, My charity book is free to download on the 1st and 2nd of November.
http://www.samasama.de/innocence-lost-in-the-ice-cream-forest/

I hope the Honda Proton partnership produces the goods.

When Mitsubishi were Protons partner it was a waste of time from a technological point of view.

It will be interesting to see if DRB-Hicom buy the old Honda test centre.

See my webpage for details.

Jimmy from Proton styling is coming to the UK this Christmas. I hope he stays with me for a few days.

DRB-Hicom LotusF1 rumours

I read in Skiddmark that there is a rumour that DRB-Hicom are interested in buying LotusF1.
http://skiddmark.com/2012/10/genii-set-to-off-load-the-lotus-f1-team/

Taken from article:

Rumours emerged in the past few days that Gerard Lopez’s Genii Capital, owners of Lotus F1, may be in talks to sell the team.
It’s merely a rumour at the moment, but Sky Sports F1 commentator Martin Brundle confirmed it during a broadcast from the Indian GP this morning, suggesting that DRB-Hicom owned Proton might be in the running.

As I have set up my proposal around Lotus this of interest to me. I see synergies here between education and Motorsport.

If DRB-Hicom are thinking along the same lines as me... Good, very good!

 

I have just watched the SKY re-run of qualifying and during qualification 1 between 19 and 18 minutes Mark Brundle did talk about this strong rumour going around the paddock.

Things appear to be falling into place. Or maybe just wishful thinking on my part.

Thinking out aloud

In Malaysia Petronas are the year on year cash cow. They have been shareholders in Proton, are  in negotiations with Proton to use their E01e (Yamaha based) engine in their cars.
Petronas are sponsors of MercedesF1 and Yamaha MotoGP. They used to own Foggy Petronas.

Whether they want to be both owners and sponsors of an F1 team I don't know. They could afford it. They have a working relationship with Group Lotus through DRB-Hicom.

I just made this up... so its only conjecture! I'm not an insider.

Time will tell...

West Wing Workers weekly.

Fords announced it is closing down its Southampton Plant. The Ford Transit will be produces in another plant, in another country I assume.
I worked in Trafford House for Fords Truck Division.

Sadly, Fords sold off its Truck division, and Transit design was done in Dunton Tech Centre, Essex.

It was a fun time in Trafford House. The Detail area produced a magazine.
WEST WING WORKERS WEEKLY
Dickie Clark produced most of the art work. It was very funny and topical.
I generally appeared in most editions. The articles were generally very well received..
I can laugh at myself. Management turned a blind eye. They enjoyed it as much as the so called WORKERS.
Happy days. I wish I had some of the issues as I'd love to share them online.
Someone, somewhere has some. Hopefully, they can be uploaded one day.

Fords were a good company to work for. Happy days

Book sales, Germany and Malaysia, Linkedin, 2013 NAP

I have a charity book which is printed by Createspace and is available on Kindle.
All money goes to charity Rokpa.
It is free to download on the 1st of the month.
To read the story behind the story go to:
www.samasama.de/innocence-lost-in-the-ice-cream-forest/

I have a friend, Jimmy and his wife Mila, coming over from Malaysia over Christmas, and after Christmas I will pop over to Germany for wedding celebration in Leipzig, for Tilo and Curtney.

So, should I get this project off the ground, I'll need to fly back to Europe end of December.

I'm getting a few people I haven't heard from for a while trying to connect via Linkedin. They have hundreds of connections, so I don't think they partcularly want to connect with me!

Its a useful tool for seeing where people are working.

I contacted the Malaysian Institute Automotive regard their upcoming National Auto Policy.
They were polite and encouraged me to give them as much info about my thoughts and project as possible.

As always I am optimistic and patient!

Petronas and Group Lotus educational partners.

I was browsing the web. I found an old Lotus Engineering article.
http://www.autoworld.com.my/v2/news/nb_details.asp?awReviewID=551&awCatID=RT.ATC.CAR.NW

The article was written in 2001. At this time the University of Petronas had an agreement with Lotus.

UTP and LotusIn a related developed Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) and Lotus have joined forces in an industrial partnership that will spearhead a new technology transfer relationship between the two organisations.

The partnership between UTP (one of the leading academic and technology institutions in the ASEAN region) and Lotus, will include the following:

- Joint research programmes such as Advanced combustion, Optical diagnostics and Active valvetrain;
- Industrial placements at Lotus for UTP students and staff;
- Technical papers, presentations and journal publications;
- Advanced engineering lecture programme by Lotus;

"By pooling resources from Lotus and UTP, we have a great opportunity to stretch the boundaries of research for the car of the future. I can see the scope within these two skilled teams to research into safer, more efficient and more advanced vehicles to take the car not just 5 years ahead but well into the next decade and beyond," said Mr Wood.

Mr Wood is in Malaysia as part of a team visiting local universities and presenting the ‘Lotus Engineering Roadshow’. The event was also presented at Proton’s premises in Shah Alam today and attended by Lord Sainsbury, the British Minister of Science & Technology, who also took the opportunity to visit the factory.

Picture copied from article: autoworld.com.my
Simon Wood on left, Lord Sainsbury and Tengku Mahaleel (Proton CEO at the time).



I visited UTP some years ago and met with it's CEO. I didn't know that there was official co-operation between Lotus and Petronas.

Petronas and DRB-Hicom both have private Universities. Petronas have a huge Motorsport budget.

They could make my vision a reality.  I hope they do!

Endorsements... are they worth anything?

I am not a big Facebook or Linkedin user. Maybe I should be...
Recently I received some unsolicited but positive endorsements on Linkedin.
The people who did this are all friends with Linda. My astrologer friend. I kind of worked with Linda on her astrology show as a guest.
You can call into Linda's show on Thursday's



My buddy Tilo made an audio file of the interview.
http://www.samasama.de/clients/innocence/John%20interviewed%20by%20Linda%20-%20cut.mp3
If you listen to the file, it is obvious that Linda and me are pals.
She endorsed my Linkedin page. She highlighted my project management skills.

I have to say, the fact that she liked me, probably coloured that endorsement. Linda hasn't actually worked with me professionally.

All the same it was nice of her to do it.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Cambodian car project. I have worked with the CEO. We are not friends.Probably never will be.

An endorsement from this person would be negative.

That would not worry me. I would carry that as a badge of honour.

The thing is... If all endosements on Linkedin are going to be friends slapping friends on the back how much worth will they have?

Cambodian National Car project.

Proton in Malaysia are the National Car company of Malaysia.
It appears that Cambodia have embarked on a similar project.
In order to achieve that aim they have set up agreements with BIW holdings Ltd
and ACICA the Cambodean automotive entity.

Cambodian National Car Project signing ceremony.

ACICA have added a name I know to their Board of Directors.

The bearded man on the end,
 used to work in Malaysia for Lotus Engineering.

I have absolutely no comment to make on this.

Caterham not Group Lotus to produce Renault sports car?

Group Lotus were rumoured to have a contract with Renault to partner in the design of the new Renault Alpine.
Reports today say that Caterham, who are a Renault customer in F1, and who appointed a Renault executive, Cyril Abiteboul, as their new F1 CEO recently, will be signing the partnership deal.
Joe Saward, a Caterham cars Director and journalist recently wrote an article:
Who is Cyril Abiteboul?
Apparently, Caterham will also produce a new car from the same Renault platform!

So the first new Caterham car under Tony Fernandes will be based on this cars platform.

Group Lotus must be very p'd.

I have in the past been in contact with Caterham over my proposal. At the time I didn't know it! I spent a couple of days with Alex Yoong at the ASLI Automotive conference 2009.

Soon after Alex took up a position with Tony Fernandes as the trainer/talent spotter for Lotus now Caterham F1.

He still has contact to Group Lotus heirarchy through DRB-Hicom.

Maybe it's not too late for Caterham and Lotus to work together. Who knows! (I don't)

As far as my MUM proposal is concerned I would be happy to work with DRB-Hicom, Caterham or Petronas if we are talking about Malaysian companies.

Obviously, I don't have any negative history with any of these entities.

Exciting times!