RE: Is Lotus in proper bother this time?

[robinessex]

So Lotuse is living up to it's name then. Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious !!!!!!!

[900T-R]

Don't give up the day job.

[crofty1984]

robinessex said:

So Lotuse is living up to it's name then. Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious !!!!!!!

So what does the "E" stand for?

[MarJay]

I think that the 'press release' does more to reinforce the message (and comedy) in Sniff Petrol's original photoshop picture than it does to refute it.

Yes, there are clearly problems at Lotus. Yes, announcing 5 cars that won't be ready for 5 years seems foolish. Yes, pratting about with Swizz beatz and Mansory should have taken a back seat to making cars. None of these things can really be refuted.

Tell me how this is a good thing? It may be salvageable, but its not a good situation which ever way you spin it. Lotus is indeed in proper bother. This, compounded with the status of Proton doesn't paint a pretty picture.

[koorby]

braddo said:

Nice post. And you should post that photo in the 'photos of your car' thread!

Thanks, and dome: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

Forgot to mention the Evora's power, or perceived lack thereof. The base model has 278bhp which I have tweaked to 300+ with two simple mods, cold air intake and exhaust - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZiHxxG1k7w

Given the draconian speed limits and laws in most Western countries, I don't need to beat my hairy chest bragging of 400-600bhp only to lose my license 0.9 seconds quicker. These are Lotus cars, and they are all about the twisty roads and track days, not drag strips and drifting. So Lotus does not need hi-po V8 supercars, but instead they are sitting on a gem of a platform with Evora; make the GTE entry level with added lightness and 300+bhp and reduce the street price to compete with Cayman and they have a way forward.

Heck, I am visiting Hethel from Oz in two weeks just to look at a GTE and convince them to export them down under.

[Wills2]

koorby said:

I am a middle aged Lotus owner. I have known and admired Lotus for quite some time, but could never quite get excited about the Elise or Exige because despite beimg desirable and beautiful to look at, I simply found them too niche and impractical to get in and out of as a daily driver or even weekend use. I'm a big lad and 6'2"

When Lotus announced the Evora my plans for a Porsche 911 instantly dissolved. Simple as that.

Why? Well, here was a car that looked absolutely sensational, was easy to get in and out of for tall people, used a reliable and proven Toyota drivetrain, sounded great, had a great interior, and was a hand-built low-volume car that would be about 1,000 times as rare as a 911, which I saw on every second street corner.

So I just needed to wait for an automatic version since arthitis in my left knee has put paid to a manual. As soon as the IPS landed in my country I test drove one (hard) on twisty roads for 100km, grinned like a drunk monkey and took delivery of the same demo car a week later.

Was I worried about the price? ($147,000 here). Nope, it was half the price of a base 911 and cheaper than a Boxster or Cayman, GT-R, M3, SLK 55 (insert ubqituous sports car here)
Was I worried about the 1430kg weight? Nope, it handled so beautifully on that sublime chassis, weight was irrelevant.
Was I worred about buying a low volume car from a company with a checkered history? Nope, in fact that was part of the appeal, the charm, the rarity, the history, the brand.

So with the news, blogs, PRs, tweets and hysteria rampant on the internet in the past 48 hours, did I do today? Well, Imwork from home, and the Evora is my daily driver. So I found some twisty roads and had a coffee in a nice village 30 minutes away:




And that, my friends is what Lotus is all about. Making cars that are used, driven, cherished, loved, and coveted - and most of all, rare as hell and the receipt of an amazing amount of admiring attention from the public who don't care or know about Danny, rappers, Proton, loans or debts - but just ask me "what is that amazing car you are driving?"

That's a nice car you have there, thing is hardly anyone else is buying them and that is a big issue.

You love the rarity of your Evora, so rather ironically one of the reasons you bought and love the car could be their downfall.

[RYH64E]

Fittster said:

RYH64E said:

In the 90s Lotus launched another basic sports car, the Elise, it sold well and was a success. ?

By success do you mean lost lots of money?

I thought that the last time Lotus was profitable was in the S1 Elise era? If they couldn't make money selling a stripped out car like the Elise for north of £20k 15 years ago then there was/is a basic flaw in their operation. They were selling about 3000 cars a year back then, if I remember correctly.

[Twincam16]

Sicob said:

To me the most likely formula model profile to succeed is:

Elise - Rehash mainstay, base models more power 200bhp. S range 300bhp. All Supercharged 4 cylinders. Offer stripped out road/track model also.

Exige / Exige Roadster - V6 nice new development, car different enough from the Elise to attract buyers, performance gains over old model. Roadster effectively V6 Elise with more aggressive different look to distinguish. Stripped out Road / Track model also.

Evora - GTE body for all. All supercharged as base model (may have had a chance at the the market segment) Minimum 330bhp for base. Stripped version also.

Eprit - They've done it before, market expecting one for years, loyal following and interest. sub 90k car though, thinking more 80k. Lends itself to one of the 5 new designs. V8 SC.

That's it. If you can't work those models, sell the company. Forget all the new models and extensive development plans costing silly money they dont have, dont run before you can walk. Elise / Exige and Evora effectively share same platform.

Keep manufacturing costs of different models to a minimum, all cars for global market (i.e Exige). I'm sure some analysis of market segment and opportunites would point you more in this direction than the bizarre multi model whole range development they have come up with. But what do I know!

I agree, and oddly enough thanks to current funds I think that's precisely what they'll end up doing.

The Elise and Exige are such fundamentally sound cars. The Exige is just about spot-on, especially with the V6, but the Elise doesn't stack up as VFM against an MX-5. They could possibly outsource production of some bits of the Elise (it's a fairly simple design, and once the means of fabrication are in place in an area where it's cheaper to mass-produce the chassis it might lighten the load - maybe Proton could help with that and ship the chassis over with their cars for Lotus to finish the job - and allow for mass production, lower costs and bigger sales. If they could sell that car for £20k-25k, they'll be onto a winner again. Nothing else in the market comes close for the money.

The Exige - just get the latest version into production and carry on with it! Response to the V6 roadster has been nothing short of rapturous and for good reason. There's a car which will gain plaudits and sell well, so there's no reason not to sell it.

Evora - good as a testbed it seems, as the Esprit is being developed around it. The new V8's ready too. As a result I'd see the Evora and Esprit as sister models.

Concentrate on those, it's what Lotus is good at. As for the big front-engined four-seaters, I reckon they should hold out for a different corporate strategy:

Get sold.

Get sold to a big-selling European or Japanese car firm. Maybe not VAG, simply because there would be too much internal conflict with Porsche and Lamborghini. Same goes for Fiat with Alfa Romeo and Ferrari. I've said before that Nissan-Renault would be an ideal candidate, especially with the current F1 tie-up. Toyota would be another obvious candidate and the firms have worked together behind the scenes since the late Seventies.

If they are sold to a firm like that, they could do two beneficial things.

Firstly, they'd have access to a ready supply of modern, reliable, competitively powerful, sporty engines. OK, so keep the bespoke V8 for the Esprit, but if it was Renault-Nissan they could use the 370Z's V6 mid-mounted in the Exige and Evora and the RenaultSport engines from the hot Meganes in the Elise. If it was Toyota, they could develop engines jointly for use across the cars, although I'd drop the 1.6 in the Elise and rework it around the GT86/BRZ flat-four - imagine how low you could mount that in the chassis and how amazingly the Elise would corner as a result.

Secondly, they could kill two birds with one stone by broadening their appeal and adding four-seater models to the range in one fell swoop - by making over a range of family cars. I'm thinking a hot hatch, a small saloon and a big saloon overhauled in the manner of the Talbot Sunbeam-Lotus, Lotus-Cortina and Lotus Carlton.

If this was Toyota, imagine the image boost they'd get. Toyota want to make themselves more interesting and are doing so with the GT86. Now imagine a Yaris-Lotus, packing a snarling high-revving powerplant, a subtly evil-looking bodykit and gunmetal alloys, and entered in the IRC. Imagine a Lotus-Avensis, effectively an MGTC touring car racer for the road, and at the top of the tree, a Lexus Lotus GS, a ballistic saloon capable of eating an M5 for breakfast with enough left over to gobble up an AMG E-class for lunch.

If it was Nissan-Renault, to avoid competing with RenaultSport they could focus on Nissan's range, offering up a mad hot rally Micra, a tuned version of that new family hatchback they've just announced they're making in Sunderland, and a Lotus-tuned Infiniti M37. It seems they're basing their forthcoming supercar on an Evora as it is.

[Fittster]

RYH64E said:

Fittster said:

RYH64E said:

In the 90s Lotus launched another basic sports car, the Elise, it sold well and was a success. ?

By success do you mean lost lots of money?

I thought that the last time Lotus was profitable was in the S1 Elise era? If they couldn't make money selling a stripped out car like the Elise for north of £20k 15 years ago then there was/is a basic flaw in their operation. They were selling about 3000 cars a year back then, if I remember correctly.

"Proton, the Malaysian maker of sedans and taxis that bought control of Lotus in 1996, hasn't made any profit from the British unit for 15 years and probably won't at least until 2014.

http://www.autonews.com/article/20111229/COPY01/31...

The flaw is that it's hard to make money selling relatively cheap sports cars, as you go upmarket the margins improve. Talking about the Elise as golden era doesn't stand true from a business perspective, it's the cause of the problem not the solution.

[otolith]

Fittster said:

Talking about the Elise as golden era doesn't stand true from a business perspective, it's the cause of the problem not the solution.

It's the only reason the company still exists to be making a loss. It isn't the cause of the problem, it was a necessary but not sufficient part of the solution.

[AllNines]

Lotus made a profit as recently as 2008; why is that conveniently forgotten?

http://www.pistonheads.com/lotus/default.asp?story...

I wish we could just stick to the facts, rather than churning over the same old rubbish whenever a new rumour is spouted. I am a fan, and want to see Lotus building some new cars, even if that means cutting back on the 5 (is it 4 now?) new models.

[Wills2]

AllNines said:

Lotus made a profit as recently as 2008; why is that conveniently forgotten?

http://www.pistonheads.com/lotus/default.asp?story...

I wish we could just stick to the facts, rather than churning over the same old rubbish whenever a new rumour is spouted. I am a fan, and want to see Lotus building some new cars, even if that means cutting back on the 5 (is it 4 now?) new models.

It's not forgotten but making £2m one year whilst losing many more millions either side still equates to a total loss over the period of ownership.

[Fittster]

AllNines said:

Lotus made a profit as recently as 2008; why is that conveniently forgotten?

http://www.pistonheads.com/lotus/default.asp?story...

I wish we could just stick to the facts, rather than churning over the same old rubbish whenever a new rumour is spouted. I am a fan, and want to see Lotus building some new cars, even if that means cutting back on the 5 (is it 4 now?) new models.

Lotus lost £14.6m in the 2008/2009 financial year.

[AllNines]

Indeed; I was just getting fed up reading that Lotus hadn't made a profit since the nineties or whatever. Clearly they have, and it is possible.

[kambites]

AllNines said:

Indeed; I was just getting fed up reading that Lotus hadn't made a profit since the nineties or whatever. Clearly they have, and it is possible.

I think it's a matter of exactly how it's phrased...

Lotus have made a profit recently

Lotus cars have not.

[900T-R]

koorby said:

Thanks, and dome: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

Forgot to mention the Evora's power, or perceived lack thereof. The base model has 278bhp which I have tweaked to 300+ with two simple mods, cold air intake and exhaust - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZiHxxG1k7w

In fairness, the '09 Evora we rolling roaded (which was provided by Hethel's PR department but came straight from Lotus' sales department as someone else kindly crashed the designated press car the night before I was due to pick it up) made 300 PS instead of 280 (on an RR that is deemed to err, if anything, to the conservative side) - the curve was still building at the rev limit...

The very long gearing however did serve to dull its performance - there was a short-ratio box available but that carried a 20 g/km penalty in the NEDC emissions test, which translates to a fair bit of tax in most EU countries these days... It's not easy being a specialist manufacturer these days (at least not when you're still too big to push each and every car through IVA and be done with it).

[V8 GRF]

900T-R said:

V8 GRF said:

They have a hayday with the Elise MkI and MkII --- TVR have Hayday with Griffith/Chimaera and TuscanI Cerbera.

Fixed that for you - IMO the Tuscan was where it all started to go wrong on several levels (I do like Tuscans, really)...

I'd agree, but thinking about it I should have just left it with the Griffith/Chimaera as the Cerbera was the start of the slippery slope as that was the first car that ran their own engine ( The early AJPs had issues) and then the downhill momentum built up with the Tuscan and the Speed 6.

Pretty much like Lotus trying to bite off more than they could chew with a new mostly upmarket five car range.

[Twincam16]

V8 GRF said:

I'd agree, but thinking about it I should have just left it with the Griffith/Chimaera as the Cerbera was the start of the slippery slope as that was the first car that ran their own engine ( The early AJPs had issues) and then the downhill momentum built up with the Tuscan and the Speed 6.

Pretty much like Lotus trying to bite off more than they could chew with a new mostly upmarket five car range.

Come to think of it, once the Esprit's out I reckon they could get by perfectly well with a three-car range.

The Elise has its own market and it's fairly strong when they get it right, they just need to sort out pricing.

The Exige, with a V6, could make the Evora seem irrelevant, especially if it's faster and cheaper. I suspect that few Evora owners are particularly bothered about the rear seats either.

The Esprit will be an excellent car considering that it'll be an Evora with a V8. The Evora is serving as an excellent test-bed and it's a great car in its own right, but I'm not entirely sure Lotus know what to do with it - is it a hardcore racer? Is it a long-legged GT? I think they're trying to get it to be everything, their 911 so to speak, but as we all know in order to be competitive in that market it needs bespoke engineering - so the Esprit with its new Wolf Zimmerman V8 then.

Get the Esprit ready, then effectively replace the Evora with the Exige. A rational three-car range, two of them sharing a chassis, the production of which could be outsourced to keep costs down. Job done!

[PerfectRide]

I think Lotus has a lot of potential, however they need more investment and some time. They create some of the best ride and handling cars and they have admitted that they need to improve in some areas to compete with the major players like Porche. They are investing to improve their quality and developing their own engines and gearboxes to be used in a range of new models.

The reason that they have been losing money in the last 15 years is to do with the bad management and low investment from Proton, who frankly did not know what to do with Lotus until recently and are relative minnows in the automotive industry. I am excited about the new restructuring plan and I hope it works out and has not come too late. My fear is that DRB Hicom will ruin Lotus by just giving up, after only two years of a five year plan or by selling to another minnow. I hope they either stay the course or sell to Nissan/Renault, TATA JRL group, BMW, Toyota or another big player that is ambitious about the brand.

The new Exige S v6 looks great, has outstanding performance, is good value and is more refined and practical than the s2. The cayman R is very good (certainly would not mind one), but if your a keen driver then the new exige will be the one and I suspect not only for its performance. The convertable could be a big seller too.

[AllNines]

kambites said:

I think it's a matter of exactly how it's phrased...

Lotus have made a profit recently

Lotus cars have not.

The point, though, is that Lotus (the whole entity) made a profit. And at a time when they had started development on the Evora. The following year was always going to be tough, and then they began their ambitious investment plan so there was never going to be a profit for a few years anyway.

Re. cars made in Hethel - where have Elise bodies and chassis been made over the years? Not always in the UK, much like the engines...