Quote:
As long time supporters of Ford, we thought you should hear directly from us about today’s announcement that the Triple 8 race team and its drivers, including Craig Lowndes, will be racing Holdens next year. There is a lot of speculation and some negative commentary around about the decision so I’m giving you the facts.
Firstly, we sponsored Triple 8 to the tune of millions of dollars for a number of years. We honoured every single aspect of our sponsorship arrangement with them and in return, we asked for one thing – that they respect our brand by painting their cars blue. This wasn’t just a simple request, it was written into their contracts over a number of years – and each year Triple 8 chose to defy that contractual obligation and paint their cars red. That may seem relatively minor to you but it’s not to us. We’re running a business at Ford and investing millions of dollars in supporting motorsport. If someone continues to take large sums of money from us every year while continuing to blatantly defy the obligations they’ve agreed to in order to obtain that money, then we have no choice but to end that arrangement.
Make no mistake – Triple 8 was given every opportunity to live up to the contractual arrangements they agreed to. Eventually we said enough – as any responsible company would do. I make no apologies for doing that. It’s not just about the cars being painted blue, it’s about whether or not we have an open and trusting relationship with an organisation that significantly benefits from their involvement with us. That wasn’t there and, in the market environment we’ve been facing over the last few years, we simply cannot afford to continue giving money to a team that does not respect our brand.
Secondly, we are hugely disappointed that Craig Lowndes will be returning to Holden at the end of this year. We’re disappointed because he’s a great talent and we’re disappointed because we have gone out of our way to welcome Craig into the Ford family since he moved to us in 2001. We’re also disappointed because we found out this was happening on Tuesday evening. Our sponsorship of Craig has benefited him to the tune of millions of dollars since 2001 and I have yet to receive a phone call from Craig himself telling me of his decision to re-sign with Triple 8 and subsequently return to Holden. We had every intention of continuing our relationship with Craig into next year but this is now not possible.
We continue to support motorsport in Australia through our direct sponsorship of FPR and SBR and we also continue to provide significant in-kind support to other teams such as DJR. Motorsport continues to be a useful tool for us to communicate our brand promise to our customers. You can rest assured that we will continue to be involved in motorsport in Australia in the future and will do what we can to leverage our successes.
Thanks for your ongoing passion and interest in Ford.
Marin
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Hmmmmm! I can see their point
BUT I'm pretty sure everyone, myself included knows that 888 were driving
FORDS and I'm DAMB SURE that every
HOLDEN supporter and Team affilliate NEW it aswell, no matter what colour the cars were!! They could of been
PINK for F's sake, EVERYONE NEW they were still FORDS AND
WINNING!!!! WHAT MORE RESPECT DO YOU WANT????????? DJR (dont get me wrong I love em) sure as poo aint
BLUE cars. They are in there
MAJOR SPONSORS COLOURS that look like Jimmy cans, VODAPHONE are 888's
MAJOR SPONSOR and they just happen to be
RED and
SILVER.
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Yes I'm disapointed.
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Cheers
Glenn