It’s been reported that Malaysian businessman, Tony Fernandeds, who is also CEO of AirAsia and majority stake owner in the Queens Park Rangers football club, is looking to sell British specialist sports car maker Caterham and related companies, including their F1 effort.
Apparently, he wants £350-/€432-/$589-million for the entire group now, after having previously announced in January that he was going to give up on F1 if the racing team didn’t start improving on its abysmal performance of scoring exactly zero points since having been taken over; the team was still called Lotus Racing back then (in 2010).
The Reuters report focuses on the F1 side of the argument, yet what we’re obviously more interested about is the actual sports car building side of Caterham’s business, and its collaboration with Renault for the rebirth of Alpine – perhaps Renault knew this was coming and decided to pull back on the deal, as we previously reported (as a rumor).
A shame, because the production-spec AeroSeven (pictured) was due next year (with some changes over the concept prompted by customer feedback) and the lofty plans put forth by the company’s management…
By Andrei Nedelea
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