Plus they don't even have a sponsor!
That will be key to whether the team is bought or not. There's no point having a decent car that will apparently be good enough 'win races', decent drivers and workforce, etc, if there's no money coming in. Honda always glossed over their lack of sponsorship as something that wasn't a big issue, but clearly it was. And if the manufacturer couldn't find corporate backing, then what hope does an independent have, especially in the current financial climate?
It isnt such a big issue at the moment for other teams who have extensive portfolios to draw from. McLaren have Vodafone, Diageo, and the Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company. BMW have Petrobas, Intel, etc. Heck, even Williams have Lenovo and a few others.
Name the last big sponsor that has invested in F1 in recent years? I can only think of ING at Renault who bought into the team as the proposition of sponsoring Alonso and the World Champion team of the time was an attractive proposition. Even then they weren't entirely new to the sport, having sponsored a few Grand Prix events in the past. Honda have no such laurels on which to mount a sponsorship drive. Besides, like every other blue chip sponsor currently in F1, ING will not be immune from the financial crisis, and within the next year or so they'll be reconsidering their investment, along with many other top sponsors. But that's just one example.
The harsh reality is that the economic downturn of 2008 and beyond will hit F1 harder than it ever has done before. We've had these sorts of periods before such as the late eighties/early nineties which was largely responsible for Lotus, Brabham, Pacific, Simtek, etc going to the wall. It didn't matter so much as costs weren't quite so high then and people like Eddie Jordan and Peter Sauber could still buy in at a reasonable price. However, the manufacturer involvement of the late nineties has seen costs escalate on unprecedented scales which has priced pretty well everyone out unless they have a lot of money behind them (Dietrich Matersitch and Vijay Mallya) or manufacturer support (Toyota or BMW).
Now we have a situation where the manufacturers are under pressure (BMW have announced a sales dip, and GM, Chrysler and Ford are all feeling the pinch), and any other racing team simply doesnt have the money or infrastructure to build and run a Grand Prix team. I think it's quite likely that Renault will be the next to go, Williams are in perpetual financial limbo, and even Toyota are considering their bottom line.
So to sum up, I simply can't see anyone buying the Honda team unless they have a lot of money, which few people have, and are interested in F1 (even fewer). I'd like to know who these three interested buyers are, whom Nick Fry discussed in the above article. Hopefully they're people who can take the team and keep it solvent, and aren't the three people I mentioned in my earlier post. Hopefully Fry proves me wrong and finds a buyer...it'd be the first and only useful thing he'd have ever done.
