How do you get the attention of Carlos Ghosn? Buy a 3/4-page add in The Tennessean – Nissan North America's hometown newspaper – accusing the company, its leader, and its motorsports arm of stealing the design of a race car that's about to take to the track at Le Mans.
Last year, the DeltaWing consortium – lead by Don Panoz and Chip Ganassi – filed a lawsuit against Nissan and the former designer of the spear-shaped race car, Ben Bowlby. The suit claimed Nissan and Bowlby had stolen confidential and proprietary information and trade secrets, along with breaching contracts and "negligent misrepresentation". And lawsuit sought to prevent Nissan from using any "wing-shaped" vehicles.
Look at the DeltaWing and then look at the Nissan ZEOD RC that's running in the Garage 56 spot at Le Mans, and you can see why Panoz is pissed.
Three months later, Nissan filed a motion to have the lawsuit removed from local jurisdiction and brought up to the federal level. Since then, nothing. Until this ad was posted in The Tennessean today.
We're reaching out to both Panoz and Nissan for a comment, but in the meantime, check the full text of the ad below.