I think that effectively outlines their core problem.

Lotus is a firm that needs to be owned by a larger, more mainstream company in order to do well. Chapman knew this which is why, at the time of his death, he was trying to sell up to Toyota. Even though they made a few mistakes, General Motors knew this too.

Proton just isn't the right owner for Lotus. Their cars aren't sufficiently expensive to be sold as Lotus-tuned hot hatches (IMO they'd have to go for a complete inside-and-out restyle and Lotus badges and names if they wanted a crack at the RenaultSport Megane), nor do they sell in the kind of echelons that would allow an M5 rival to make sense.

So, either Proton really gets their act together and allows Lotus to design them a small range of cars that really would compete with Europe's absolute best - I'm talking up there with the Ford Focus, with a Lotus ST equivalent - or sells them to someone who can appreciate and use them to good effect.

I do wonder whether Nissan are sizing them up. In the current issue of Autocar it reports that Lotus could build the new Emerg-E and the new Renault Alpine at Hethel on the Evora platform. If sales of those cars take off, that could prove the lifesaver they need. It also means they can dump the Evora without the work that went into it going to waste, then Lotus can concentrate on an Elise/Exige/Esprit lineup.

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/lotus-c...

nope, I don't...

(although I would suggest not as to get £60+M profit your probably talking >£300m worth of contracts)

sorry?

if it costs you £60m to pay the bills, and you only have £60M of work (at invoice value) then you are screwed.

I was assuming the bills include staff wages, buildings, taxes, IT, all the overheads.

Engineering consultancy is selling brain time with boffins. The end product is intelectual property, not things.

When I worked for an engineering consultancy (civil, but they tackled all sorts of projects and had every kind of engineer going along with geologists, ecologists, programmers, etc) their main concern was utilisation. I think Lotus maybe makes more use of contractors than they did, but the thing they most wanted to avoid was paying engineers to twiddle their thumbs.

If that Autocar article has any truth to it, those bestsellers might actually turn out to be Infinitis and Alpines.

Could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Clearly with the outlook now facing the world economies, Lotus need to very much scale back costs.
The 'Lotus Cortina' era was a joint venture which was very beneficial to Lotus in revenue and publicity terms and to Ford in image/profile/credibility terms which boosted sales of mid range models, as did the Cooper Car Co, with BMC.
Another such venture surely an obvious aim.
Stick with what you were good at is a good motto. A 3 car range of exciting looking light basic simple uncluttered cars giving driver pleasure at modest prices.
They are not Porsche BMW Jaguar, should aim to be rather different -look to sell 4000 cars a year, something they did achieve in '69-73. Design is all important in terms of appeal, cost of ownership and cost of manufacture.

Sales tax was replaced by VAT. However, for cars, so-called 'Special Car Tax' was introduced, which was added on top. That wasn't abolished until IIRC 1992. I believe that SCT was not payable on kits, so (some of) the tax advantages of kit sale persisted, or am I mis-remembering how SCT operated? But VAT meant they were in any case more expensive than hitherto.