Agreed. They look like they are in freefall - NY has blocked them from being part of a 2000 (!) car bid because of poor performance, and they've lost 3 major Canadian bids back to back (Montreal, Toronto and ViaRail). Massive issues with other units in delivery in NA also.
They may end up in serious financial difficulty as you say, the aircraft division is wiped out and had to be bailed out by Airbus, and the non-delivery must be causing massive cashflow issues (i assume that the majority of the payment is done on a successful unit delivery).
Just amazing how a manufacturer who inherited some of the networker builds from BREL and gather a lot of customers over the years with their series of turbostar/electrostars and then all of a sudden flop with these aventras, when you have near suscessful units such as Desiros and Junipers rolling from CAF/Simens.
Is it now safe to say British motive engineering is coming to an end?
What's amazing is how long they carried on with old designs. Even the 387s are based on a load of old tech (the computers being incredibly outdated and introducing many software issues as time goes on). I know they say 'if it aint broke...' but was it ever not broke?
Now they have come up with something new, but it seems their poor quality control that has afflicted even trains made with 'tried and tested' designs really shows them up.
Some thoughts:
I wonder if they really are in trouble?
With the recent Underground order going elsewhere, the S-Stock must be finished by now?
They're busy with the Aventra for Overground and SWR for now but that's it isn't it?
Yes, they have marketed the bi-mode which Cross Country and East Midlands may order, as I suspect they'll come with a maintenance deal, so Derby would be the ideal lcoation.
But it remind me of National Express, who seemed to own most rail franchises of old, but now where are they? No where.
And the threat of both Stagecoach and Virgin Trains leaving the rail franchising market looms... leaving only First Group to be one of the originals.
Is the same happening with train manufacturers, with TOCs looking at new companies to produce innovative designs, instead of the same old recycled ideas?