@Madockawando posted:It is conceivable that he opened a new factory because it was in the works long before he decided to close down or put MTH up for sale. Perhaps he was hoping it would be part of a package deal if he could have sold MTH. It seems most likely that as others have stated MTH was for sale for sometime now with no takers, hence the close out plan.
Those are logical explanations. There was a comment, however (don't remember now who made it, but someone close to the manufacturering end), that it was fairly well known in the industry that MW had been trying to sell the company for quite a while (I think it was a year, perhaps a little more, don't remember for sure, but I remember being surprised that this had been going on for so long). If that's correct, proceeding with the development of a new factory (even if arrangements were already well underway) when there had been little interest expressed from any prospective purchaser, seems illogical.
Maybe the information was incorrect, but the alternative would be that MW decided to sell the company on a fairly immediate basis without spending the time to properly market it, and knowing there was a good chance that all the money that had been spent building a new factory would be thrown away.
It's all a matter of timing when trying to insert an element of logic here - how long had arrangements for the factory been in process, how long had MTH been on the market, etc. However, if production had just started since the beginning of the year (given that the engines just showed up at dealers a few weeks ago), it's hard to understand why MW didn't cease development of the new factory unless he made an extremely quick decision to pull the plug on MTH.
