Mercedes GP 2011

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Cocles
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Joined: 02 Sep 2011, 13:27

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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xpensive wrote:I beg to differ, contrary to what many of F1T's aficinados believe, much of the different ownerships and associations within the automotive industry is virtually unknown to the general public, hence the different stickers on the VW's.
Agree with you 100% here X. In the US at least, only hardcore car people understand (or even care) who owns what. The subject always interested me, and I rarely found someone who even knew that Ford owned Jaguar, let alone GM owning Saab, VW owning Bentley, etc.
xpensive wrote:AMG's relation to Mecedes is of course crystal-clear to the likes of yourslf and JET, but I'm afraid that it might be confusing to the rest of the world, as if Porsche would suddenly call their racing cars RUF-Porsche or something.
Disagree with you here. I'm in Los Angeles, which is a pretty good gauge for the US. Here at least, RUF and AMG are apple's and oranges. RUF is a third party group like Brabus. Only gear-heads are going to know what they are.

AMG though is a different story. It's *much* more well known.

HOWEVER... You're right in that the average layman doesn't fully understand what it entrails. Here in the US, most view AMG the same way they do an M badge on a BMW, or an R badge on a Jag. To most, it's just a badge that signifies, "This Mercedes is fast and expensive." They don't know that AMG is its own robust organization within Mercedes. It's just seen as a premium badge for a Benz. So yes, the AMG badges are very well known and prestigious here (as are the M badges on BMW's). And like the M badge with BMW, AMG and Mercedes are seen as synonymous. AMG = Premium Mercedes.

And they're not rare either. Every Mercedes showroom here is filled with AMG branded Mercedes. They're the first thing you see when you walk in the door. In fact, the AMG badge is so prestigious here in LA that some groups are even stereotypically known for rebadging their regular Mercedes with AMG logos to make it appear they paid more for their car. (Not to be offensive, but one of the local dealers here actually refers to this as a "Persian Conversion".)

Maybe it's different in other parts of the globe, but here in the US, the idea that Mercedes could distance themselves from their F1 team with an AMG badge is just... silly. You might as well say they were distancing themselves from their F1 team by replacing all of their "Mercedes-Benz" badges with 3 pointed stars. (Alright, not quite. But close.)

X, when you and Mun describe AMG, you're giving a perfect description of Brabus. AMG though? Here in the US there simply isn't any way to separate those three letters from the three pointed star.

TLDR
AMG is very well known in the United States and is synonymous with "Premium Mercedes-Benz".

twoshots
twoshots
2
Joined: 01 Jul 2008, 12:37

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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And this highlights a point that everyone seems not to have discussed yet (or I missed it); that Merc's badging of the F1 team as AMG affiliated allows them to have one over the BMW and Audi brands.

Not necessarily as a competitor to McLaren and Ferrari but as a branding differentiator to other 'premium' cars.

Richard
Richard
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Joined: 15 Apr 2009, 14:41
Location: UK

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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Yes, my point was that the public didn't associate the Jaguar F1 team with anything other than Jaguar, the rest of the Ford product line didn't benefit. Hence the high cost per car.

However the AMG badge is visible in every single Merc brochure and in every Merc dealer, so the cost benefit can be spread over the whole Merc range. To reinforce the point, the F1 team still retains Merc in its name. It is the Mercedes AMG team.

Cocles - what you describe is the same as the UK. Although I've never seen anything as horrific as this example from Virginia:

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Last edited by Richard on 08 Dec 2011, 11:29, edited 1 time in total.

bizadfar
bizadfar
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Joined: 03 Jan 2007, 15:51

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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Cocles wrote:
xpensive wrote:I beg to differ, contrary to what many of F1T's aficinados believe, much of the different ownerships and associations within the automotive industry is virtually unknown to the general public, hence the different stickers on the VW's.
Agree with you 100% here X. In the US at least, only hardcore car people understand (or even care) who owns what. The subject always interested me, and I rarely found someone who even knew that Ford owned Jaguar, let alone GM owning Saab, VW owning Bentley, etc.
xpensive wrote:AMG's relation to Mecedes is of course crystal-clear to the likes of yourslf and JET, but I'm afraid that it might be confusing to the rest of the world, as if Porsche would suddenly call their racing cars RUF-Porsche or something.
Disagree with you here. I'm in Los Angeles, which is a pretty good gauge for the US. Here at least, RUF and AMG are apple's and oranges. RUF is a third party group like Brabus. Only gear-heads are going to know what they are.

AMG though is a different story. It's *much* more well known.

HOWEVER... You're right in that the average layman doesn't fully understand what it entrails. Here in the US, most view AMG the same way they do an M badge on a BMW, or an R badge on a Jag. To most, it's just a badge that signifies, "This Mercedes is fast and expensive." They don't know that AMG is its own robust organization within Mercedes. It's just seen as a premium badge for a Benz. So yes, the AMG badges are very well known and prestigious here (as are the M badges on BMW's). And like the M badge with BMW, AMG and Mercedes are seen as synonymous. AMG = Premium Mercedes.

And they're not rare either. Every Mercedes showroom here is filled with AMG branded Mercedes. They're the first thing you see when you walk in the door. In fact, the AMG badge is so prestigious here in LA that some groups are even stereotypically known for rebadging their regular Mercedes with AMG logos to make it appear they paid more for their car. (Not to be offensive, but one of the local dealers here actually refers to this as a "Persian Conversion".)

Maybe it's different in other parts of the globe, but here in the US, the idea that Mercedes could distance themselves from their F1 team with an AMG badge is just... silly. You might as well say they were distancing themselves from their F1 team by replacing all of their "Mercedes-Benz" badges with 3 pointed stars. (Alright, not quite. But close.)

X, when you and Mun describe AMG, you're giving a perfect description of Brabus. AMG though? Here in the US there simply isn't any way to separate those three letters from the three pointed star.

TLDR
AMG is very well known in the United States and is synonymous with "Premium Mercedes-Benz".
I stopped reading here...There IS a M GmbH, Quattro GmbH (Audi's RS arm) and probably many more that I don't know about nor care about.

This is not distancing. Barely anyone these days knows of AMG's previous role.

Everyone knows the hi-po cars have the AMG badge or the optioned cars with the body/wheel/suspension and whatever else it entails on other models. All it does is give them a higher profile.

On the Persian comment, well I actually agree to an extent. They are one of the most competitive people by nature and do stupid things to portray the illusion of advancement in society as well as their own social realms (ie between other Persians).

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Ferraripilot
21
Joined: 28 Jan 2011, 16:36
Location: Atlanta

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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Here in the US (not sure how much it matters as F1 is not so popular here), changing to Mercedes AMG is beneficial for the team. In essence, I agree with the above poster that AMG signifies something good. I'm actually surprised they didn't do this in the first place considering AMG is pretty much their in-house performance brand. Why not market the brand recognition that much more right?

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MIKEY_!
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Joined: 10 Jul 2011, 03:07

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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+1. It's not harming Mercedes to add the AMG badge to the team so why not do it. Whether they have any technical input doesn't really matter for their image and PR. Anyway I don't really think AMG have the technical capability for F1 at this stage.

ForMuLaOne
ForMuLaOne
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Joined: 19 Feb 2011, 02:01

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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In fact it were the employees of the M-GmbH who were responsible for the debut of BMW in Formula One. They developed the very powerful engines in the 80`. AMG is a 100 percent subsidiary of Mercedes. It makes sense to imply this tag into their Formula One Team name.

Furthermore you have to keep in mind that there is a huge transfer in knowledge between AMG or M-GmbH and the corporations when you talk about the development of powerful versions of Mercedes or BMW versions.

marcush.
marcush.
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Joined: 09 Mar 2004, 16:55

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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AMG is a branch of Mercedes and in reality has nothing to do with motorsports todays.They are really a development center for small scale production runs in Mercedes passenger cars .
HWA is the motorsports arm developing all the race stuff for Mercedes.

The AMG tag does make sense to promote the expensive stuff as f1 followers will inevitably look at the special stuff available in the group and as a benefit ,it will
make it easier for Mercedes to close it down when they got enough of MGP.
Sure 30K units sold will never justify having a formula 1 team. but then AMG also has bought into Ducati for whatever reason.

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JohnsonsEvilTwin
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Joined: 29 Jan 2010, 11:51
Location: SU 419113

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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HWA is almost literally 50% AMG.

The only difference at HWA is that Hans Werner Aufrecht calls the shots and owns 51 % of the place and that yes it runs AMG race operations.
More could have been done.
David Purley

Richard
Richard
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Joined: 15 Apr 2009, 14:41
Location: UK

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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Those race operations are badged Merc AMG?

xpensive
xpensive
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Joined: 22 Nov 2008, 18:06
Location: Somewhere in Scandinavia

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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If Daimler had wanted to close down MGP, they would have re-named it "Maybach", no?
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"

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JohnsonsEvilTwin
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Joined: 29 Jan 2010, 11:51
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Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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richard_leeds wrote:Those race operations are badged Merc AMG?
Yea. Hans is an old school engineer who likes to play boss :)
Mercedes duly note his HWA operation and made it their official racing arm...
CLK GTR and the flipping CLR right through to merc tintops of today(DTM) are all HWA.

Shame 747 ain't about, he could really give some insighful answers here.
More could have been done.
David Purley

wunderkind
wunderkind
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Joined: 04 Apr 2007, 06:12

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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JohnsonsEvilTwin wrote:
richard_leeds wrote:Those race operations are badged Merc AMG?
Yea. Hans is an old school engineer who likes to play boss :)
Mercedes duly note his HWA operation and made it their official racing arm...
CLK GTR and the flipping CLR right through to merc tintops of today(DTM) are all HWA.

Shame 747 ain't about, he could really give some insighful answers here.
The actual cars were designed by Gerhard Ungar who is still the technical director of HWA and responsible for the DTM cars.

elf341
elf341
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Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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Richard
Richard
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Joined: 15 Apr 2009, 14:41
Location: UK

Re: Mercedes GP 2011

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xpensive wrote:If Daimler had wanted to close down MGP, they would have re-named it "Maybach", no?
Lumbering and over weight? Surely they'd have to go for a super long wheelbase?

Talking of which how is the missus' diana-mobile?