McLaren & Mercedes cellphone... more than just branding?

Some product endorsements make lots of sense.  Say what you like about pro-gamer Fatal1ty, but it seems reasonable that he should put his name to a variety of gaming-focused mice, keyboards and other accessories.  Other endorsements have that unfortunate tang of desperation and cashing in.  Now I'm not trying to say that this Sharp 770SH ML special McLaren-edition is such a cash-in, but have you ever seen F1 driver Fernando Alonso actually using this handset, or driving around in a car that looks like it?  I sure as heckity haven't.

In fact, as far as customisation goes it looks like they've pretty much got up to branding it with the McLaren colours of red, silver and black, and writing "Vodafone McLaren Mercedes" along the front.  It's an okay handset; 3G, 262k colour 240x320 screen with video and mp3 playback, 1.3-megapixel camera and miniSD for expanding the pathetic 5MB of internal memory. They're claiming 220hrs talk-time and 340hrs standby, which doesn't sound quite right to me, and at 17.1mm thick it's not going to give ultra-skinny fashion phones any sleepless nights.  Yours for €69 ($90).

Xatakomovil [translated] [thanks to Rafa for the tip]