Martin Beck-Burridge’s scientific contributions

The Prodrive story began in the in the late 1970s, when the David Richards established D R Racing, to manage the Middle East Rally Championship under a consultancy agreement with the Rothmans tobacco company. Essentially the company acted as Championship and events organizer, ensuring that the brand derived maximum exposure from the events. By the beginning of the 1980 season, David Richards’ partner Ian Parry was brought into the company to concentrate on the commercial development of the motorsport consultancy business. This was essentially developing the company’s reputation and ability in assisting partners to obtain the maximum benefit from their motorsport expenditure. An objective that has never altered, but which has certainly become more focused.

BBC television and subsequently the commercial channels followed a cross-section of British sports in the 1950s and 1960s. As football, tennis, boxing, motorsport and cricket developed a wider TV audience, many of the teams and individuals involved gained increasing amounts of corporate sponsorship, that were not always beneficial. Debate resounded around the offices of sporting organizations, lamenting the loss of the ‘True Amateur’ and the spirit of the ‘game’. Commercialism was not simply influencing the way in which sports were presented, it was altering the financial and organizational structures, both of the participants’ involvement and the administration. Now, everyone had to deal with ‘The Sponsors’.

The association of Jaguar with motorsport success goes back to the company’s roots in Blackpool, in the era of the Swallow Sidecar, and, continues today in the considerably more expensive and sophisticated World of Formula 1 Grand Prix. Not only dramatically more expensive but with the ‘small’ advantage that at least some of the expense is offset by contributions from sources other than the company, in this case Ford Motor Company of Dearborn, USA.

Founded in 1984 by David Richards and Ian Parry, respectively Chairman and Commercial Director, the company has had a continuing record of profitability and increasing turnover. However, as the current Chairman has stated: ‘In those formative years were a period when we tried our hand at a wide range of business initiatives. In hindsight, we were like so many new ventures, and often failed to focus on our core skills’.

There is one Japanese automobile manufacturer that has created a totally new marketing image and a new brand, within a period of twelve years. Of all the Japanese manufacturers in the early post-war years (founded in 1953), Fuji Heavy Industries was one with high-technology antecedents. The company can trace its origins back to the second decade of the 20th century, when the company was founded as an aeronautical research laboratory. The parent company Fuji Heavy Industries has always been a technological leader, it is one of the world’s top five producers of general purpose engines, designing and manufacturing engines for a wide variety of uses, including marine leisure craft, road cars, trucks, construction vehicles and equipment. FHI is also an important sub-contractor to the aerospace industry, building components for military and commercial aircraft as well as un-manned aircraft. Active in the Japanese space programme, the company’s technological expertise was used to design and build the Lunar Lander FTB (Flying Test Bed) for the Japanese Space Agency. The company has five main divisions, with total turnover in 1999 of over £8098 m, with more than 80 per cent of turnover (over £7170 m) derived from the automobile division.

As Jaguar slowly gained confidence in TWR’s ability to deliver the racing results, and in their ability to build and market a more appealing product, the Company became more ambitious again, both on the circuit and in the showroom. Having achieved their European objectives with the XJS, and shown that they could beat BMW in the Bavarian company’s favourite touring car playground, wider and more ambitious plans were laid. The company’s main objective was international sports car racing, and with it, a chance to expand their promotional presence in the largest market of all, for Jaguar and most other prestige brands, the United States of America and in excess of 40 m potential customers.

In 1979, the official racing Jaguars were silenced, as British Leyland went through corporate agonies that threatened even Jaguar’s existence, in the early eighties. Given what had happened to Britain’s once globally dominant motorcycle industry, Jaguar employees faced the previously inconceivable notion that they could sink with the British Leyland ship, or simply be killed off by their ignorant owners. On the XJ-S front, sales were at an all-time low. In May 1980 John Egan became chairman of Jaguar under Leyland rule and he recalled: ‘Do you know we were just a one product company then? For my first nine months we made no XJ-S coupes at all!’ The Canadian importers ended that drought with an order for 100, Egan remembered, ‘then we made another 100 and that seemed to saturate the market for a while.’

The logic behind Subaru’s foray into the World Rally Championship was formulated and driven by the fact that, as a niche player in an intensely competitive global industry, they had to find a differentiating factor. Poor profit and sales performance in the mid-1980s (see page 58) had convinced the Board and management of the company that in order to stay an independent player the company had to ‘raise its image and build on its nonreplicable strengths’. Furthermore, whilst at the end of the 1980s the company had a well established reputation as a manufacturer of all-wheel-drive vehicles their model sales profile was low volume low profit. Therefore, their decision to pursue a policy of image and brand building through motorsport to alter that profile was formulated on a clear set of strategic goals. That is not in itself particularly innovative or new, but what was unique amongst the Japanese manufacturers in the 1990s, was the clarity and persistence with which they formulated their plans.

In utilising the expertise and experience of the TWR organization, Jaguar, as with Prodrive and Subaru, were determined not to simply seek immediate and short term media coverage. In exploring how the relationship between Jaguar and its racing partners was utilized to translate the partnership into a longer term marketing alliance with Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR) it is important to understand the similarities that emerge from the two experiences. As with the Subaru case, the profile of TWR’s strategies and activities in the Jaguar campaign provides an interesting and illustrative set of lessons as to the necessary conditions of success in such brand development strategies. The evidence is in the impact that the 1982–85 racing programme for the XJ-S had on the marque’s worldwide sales, which is followed by a chapter exploring the partnership’s 1985–91 sports car programme.