Marussia’s employees leave their working places, the company’s assets are being sold. As reported by various sources, the project is closing down. It appears that the day when the Russian supercars will be back on sale again is far distant now. The news about dismissal of the personnel came rather unexpectedly. But on the other hand, it was predictable. According to the experts, the total investment amount of project’s participants was about $100,000. However, due to the lack of commercial profit, the company faced serious financial problems.
At some point the company took a strategic decision to take part in the government project called the “Cortege”. Building cars based on common platform for the presidential garage could have recovered the company’s fortunes as 3 billion of public funding is quite a feat. The cars built as part of the Cortege project will go on public sale as well. In his interview to Avtovesti one the company’s representatives said: “Currently Marussia is taking part in the Cortege project. The project is not shutting down and the brand will most probably be preserved”.
However, it is reported that the development of the government project was fully delegated to the Russian scientific automotive institute which employed the entire Marussia’s engineering team. The life of Marussia Motors was not long. Mass production car manufacturing started in 2010 and only two models of supercars were on production lines by the time the company decided to close down — B1 and B2.
Interesting to know whether this situation would affect the Formula 1 Marussia Team as last year it did not even manage to score any points and was only 10th in the Constructors' Championship standings. Assuming that the sports part of the project has the same investors, it might mean that... So far, no official statements have been made but the perspectives are not optimistic, like in that song from the old Russian movie about the beautiful Marussia shedding tears. Although there is still a chance it all might work out well.
According to official press-release by Marussia F1 Team, racing team is an independent project with no any connections with supercar building company. So there is no changes in team plans for Formula 1.
