RE: Lotus jobs at risk

[Impasse]

k-ink said:

We'll I'm a big kid

The local council seem to be wanting to help those 270 in Norfolk who may be laid off. Clicky

[kambites]

blueg33 said:

kambites said:

DonkeyApple said:

The fact is that you can't build a single model of niche car in the West and stand alone. manufacturers.

Caterham seem ot be doing OK, as do Ginetta and Noble.

Ginetta we saved by someone with a passion for racing who focussed on racing. Plus he was/is a really good entrepreneur. Someone like LNT possible could revive Lotus, but they are few and far between. A salaried CEO is less likely to have the vision and the balls IMO

True, but I'm not sure anything less than that is going to make Lotus profitable.

[Ozzie Osmond]

blueg33 said:

The whole thing is tricky for Lotus, the £40-70k sports car category is dominated by Porsche who make very good cars and have massive brand awareness. This niche really needs more competitition and IMO Lotus could provide that with the Evora they very nearly do.

If you take the Evora's main competitor the Cayman, in 2010 the Evora launch year they sold 205 cars against 838 Caymans. If Lotus had kept up that sales rate things would have been better, sadly in 2014 they have only sold 22 Evoras in the UK.

As a total sportscar fan I was thinking about this thread while driving around today. Yes, to some extent your previous comment was correct that if you look at the cars "most sold" by Porsche they are expensive SUVs and saloons. Then there's the iconic 911 which today is also an expensive car - certainly if the fancier models are bought or many options ticked on the l-o-n-g and pricey options list. But I doubt many, if any, of the customers for the cars I've mentioned so far would be seriously tempted by the smaller, cheaper cars from Lotus.

The problem area lies exactly where you mentioned in your latest post - the cheaper end of the range. Since Evora was launched brand new models of Boxster/Cayman have arrived smack into the price band you mentioned. A base car at £39,000 is astounding value for a bang-up-to-date 6-cylinder sportscar and the more powerful, more highly specified "S" models can be on the road for less than £50,000. Some of these may be bought for the badge but without question a fair chunk of them are bought by genuine sportscar enthusiasts. And that's the problem for Lotus - not that Porsche are selling lots of expensive cars but that Porsche have a pair of very, very good sportscars targeting exactly the same potential customers as Lotus.

I really don't know what the answer is for Lotus, because their sales volumes have fallen so low it must be almost impossible to see any profit in the business. Without a successful business "today" it's very difficult to invest for "tomorrow". So we just have to hope there's a newer, bigger, better and well priced Elise on the way to save the company again.

[kambites]

Ozzie Osmond said:

So we just have to hope there's a newer, bigger, better and well priced Elise on the way to save the company again.

Is that possible though? If they replace the Elise with a bigger, heavier, more modern feeling car they'll be going up squarely against the bottom of the Boxster range; their car will be too heavy and numb for their current owners to upgrade to and not as good as the Porsche for everyone else. If they try to pitch it below the Boxster's starting price, it'll either be rubbish or they'll make a loss on it.

[DonkeyApple]

blueg33 said:

kambites said:

DonkeyApple said:

The fact is that you can't build a single model of niche car in the West and stand alone. manufacturers.

Caterham seem ot be doing OK, as do Ginetta and Noble.

Ginetta we saved by someone with a passion for racing who focussed on racing. Plus he was/is a really good entrepreneur. Someone like LNT possible could revive Lotus, but they are few and far between. A salaried CEO is less likely to have the vision and the balls IMO

The key for Lotus is that it is saddled with the running costs of a much larger company. Without those costs they'd be OK for the cars they produce.

And I wouldn't include Ginetta in that list at all. That's another debt fuelled basket case. The absolute last thing a firm like Lotus need is that kind of antics.

[robinessex]

Dainty Ankles said:

robinessex said:

Odd that Lotus, with all it's history, managers, engineers, experience, knowledge, skill, get into the dog dodo, and a few men in a shed, with no previous behind them, do this :-

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

Mmmmmmmmmmmm......................!!!

No previous?
Are you being serious?

As a company I ment. Lots of individualy clever guys re car design an manufacturing in the UK. And lots have fell flat on their faces as well going the car manufacturing route.

[lotus83]

lotus celebrated one of there best sales quarters in 3 years. Also the lotus exige v6 is cheap compared to the price of a porsche gt3 which is its closest rival.

I heard the job cuts where from mostly R&d?

[kbf1981]

mrdemon said:

even the V6 exige is a bit over priced and does not fair well in the UK market, the performance lacking over the hype esp on lap times.

bks. Read any review. I've driven it as well as a lot of fast other stuff. It's very quick.

As above, Lotus cars are doing well and I quite fancy one. There's very few serious sports cars around now that are in quite the same guise.

[bunyarra]

Well, we used to run content writing for the Lotus Engineering Magazine and had done for 10 years. It went from 6 issues a year to 4 then we were down to invoicing for each issue. Finally it was canned a few months ago to be replaced by one from their PR Dept.

We had an inkling things in Engineering were not good - and now it looks like all the jobs will be going in that division. The shame is that Engineering did really good work for others, I remember seeing the first Tesla cars around their track many moons ago plus talking to their engineers about hybrids, light weighting, advanced fuels and much more. Very bright people.

[kbf1981]

DonkeyApple said:

But at the same time they can't sell to pensioners without doubling the mass and price of the cars kitting them out will pile warming tech, motors to move their piles up, down, back and forwards, heaters to stop their heads falling off, compliant suspension to stop their hips shattering and Stanna designed exit points.

Lotus as it is currently structured is totally fked in the UK. And if they remain selling most of their stock in Asia then why stay in Britain and pay those costs? The way they are currently structured needs them to either sell vastly more units or massively capital restructure the business to fit.

If the option is to increase volumes what we do know is that they can't do this with existing models. And if we look at the sports car industry for data it is pure fantasy to think they can do it with more sports cars. If they are to remain structured as they are then they have to find volume from somewhere.

We export to China. The chinese see European and US brands as premium compared to home grown - like many countries. Part of their usp IS that they're made here.

[kbf1981]

kambites said:

Interesting. I wonder what the production line capacity is? Maybe the price has pushed them more into the hands of people who will use them in a "weekend car" type role than the Elise or Evora so they aren't on the roads as much.

This. Mine would be a weekend car

[DonkeyApple]

kbf1981 said:

DonkeyApple said:

But at the same time they can't sell to pensioners without doubling the mass and price of the cars kitting them out will pile warming tech, motors to move their piles up, down, back and forwards, heaters to stop their heads falling off, compliant suspension to stop their hips shattering and Stanna designed exit points.

Lotus as it is currently structured is totally fked in the UK. And if they remain selling most of their stock in Asia then why stay in Britain and pay those costs? The way they are currently structured needs them to either sell vastly more units or massively capital restructure the business to fit.

If the option is to increase volumes what we do know is that they can't do this with existing models. And if we look at the sports car industry for data it is pure fantasy to think they can do it with more sports cars. If they are to remain structured as they are then they have to find volume from somewhere.

We export to China. The chinese see European and US brands as premium compared to home grown - like many countries. Part of their usp IS that they're made here.

Not quite. Every car manufacturer with enough sales in China is looking to build in China to avoid the punatitive import taxes.

And we only have to look at how we lap up quintessentially British brands made in Indiabor China to see that being actually made in Britian isn't as relevant as perceived.

The fact remains that Lotus either needs to increase sales volumes enormously or restructure its business.

[saaby93]

DonkeyApple said:

The fact remains that Lotus either needs to increase sales volumes enormously or restructure its business.

Isn't that what it's doing

Dont knock it - it does have it's own niche.
However if theyre losing their R&D department that can only go one way

[wemorgan]

IMHO Lotus should have beaten Alfa to the 4C by several years. Even the 2015 MX5 is similar weight to the Elise. As time passes on the difference between Lotus and its competitors has become less and less. Lotus need to reinforce their USPs - lightweight, performance, value. With that there should be a viable business for a 2000/yr OEM.

[anonymous-user]

Personally, i'd like to see Lotus have a crack at a "sporty" one of these:






;-)

[blueg33]

They did prototype of a hybrid Evora

I assume development costs were too high at a point at which the company was really struggling

[DonkeyApple]

saaby93 said:

DonkeyApple said:

The fact remains that Lotus either needs to increase sales volumes enormously or restructure its business.

Isn't that what it's doing

Dont knock it - it does have it's own niche.
However if theyre losing their R&D department that can only go one way

I'm not knocking it. They do have a great niche. But like Aston, they have accumulated the debt and costs of a much, much larger business and so are basically crippled.

If you are selling 3000 products a year and growing it at 100% a years but your running costs (debt financing) require you to be selling 15,000 products a year then you don't have enough time, even with stellar growth to reach the point of sustainability.

As Lotus have relied quite heavily in the engineering revenues to try and cover the slow growth and insufficient revenues from the cars then reading that this side is being scaled back is hardly good news.

Lotus have reached the point where it is irrelevant how many cars they make a year they simply cannot ever hit the numbers needed to justify their current obligations and liabilities.

They are like Argentina in that they take money that they haven't earned but fail to use that money to create enough revenue to justify or sustain the costs of that money. Unlike Argentina, Lotus doesn't default often enough for this model to work really well.

[kambites]

wemorgan said:

IMHO Lotus should have beaten Alfa to the 4C by several years.

They did, it's called the Elise.

[Impasse]

blueg33 said:

They did prototype of a hybrid Evora

I assume development costs were too high at a point at which the company was really struggling

It was more of a showcase to demonstrate what technology they have been developing. They already have other manufacturers coming to them for consultancy in hybrid powertrains. But the tech would certainly be at home in a new "Esprit" or similar.

[SidewaysSi]

kambites said:

wemorgan said:

IMHO Lotus should have beaten Alfa to the 4C by several years.

They did, it's called the Elise.

And the Elise is still a much better car than the Alfa. 18 years ahead I make it.