According the folks at AUTOSPORT, Craig Pollock’s PURE engine program has come to a screeching halt. It seems, per an email seen by AUTOSPORT, that the engine program will stop production in Cologne Germany due to a lack of “bridging finance”. The program was being supported by a US-based investment firm but apparently the bridge financing was to come from the EU for tax reasons.
Bridge financing is a fancy term that basically means you need cash to keep the operation liquid and moving forward until such as time as you believe there will be an inflow of cash through sales etc. perhaps the crux of that need is really rooted in the delay of the V6 engine format that was to be adopted in 2013 but now has been postponed until 2014. that 12 month delay would be a serious impact on projected sales and require additional cash to keep the program going.
Pollock told AUTOSPORT that the bridge financing should be in place by the end of the month but an email from PURE’s technical director Gilles Simon, suggests he is unclear of when the operation will start again. You can read the email content here at AUTOSPORT.
It is certainly another chapter in the saga of the ski instructor turned Formula One driver manager turned team owner turned engine maker. While the FIA was endorsing the program, many wondered if this was PURE nonsense given the current state of Formula One.
