RE: Lotus jobs at risk

Author
Discussion

TaylotS2K

1,964 posts

206 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
I thought Lotus would do cracking business on fixing cars. As many seem to be troublesome. I 'nearly' got an Elise instead of an S2000. It hasn't cost me anything apart from consumables and servicing. Meanwhile, someone I know has spent a fortune on keeping his 'from new' Elise on road. This put me off getting one.

SpudLink

5,669 posts

191 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
k-ink said:
Back in the day the mk1 elise was what £22k?
It was less than £20k in the 1998.
We live in an era where people are willing to pay >£25k for a fast hatchback. I guess what people want is fast and practical, and as easy to drive as the car they took their driving test in. The joys of steering feel and driver involvement do not seem to sell cars in the numbers that Lotus need. Which is a shame.


Dr S

4,995 posts

225 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
Max_Torque said:
The option for "new" that seems a great fit with Lotus is a lightweight, low drag, "Eco" sports car, which is also currently a gap in an otherwise crowded market. Think current Exige chassis with a Ford ecoboost 3 cyl engine at say 150bhp, with a 50kW electric motor for town driving, with some new "aero" body work. Nail a 2 seat £35k, 50g/km hybrid that is cool looking and fun to drive and i think you could carve a niche for oneself, a niche with a good future rather than a prospect that is almost entirely historical.
That goes into the right direction IMHO. With what they are doing now, they are stuck in a niche on the decline as there are only so many purists and die hards around.

They need to reinvent themselves or die. Porsche saved themselves first with the Boxster (aggressive parts sharing with the 996) and then the Cayenne. Catering only for the purist/hard core will not allow Lotus to survive, as sad as it is

paranoid airbag

2,679 posts

158 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
k-ink said:
I supported Lotus back when their prices were sensible-ish. I had a new 111R for £27k. Once their prices went mental I lost all interest. The higher the prices the more people walk away, so they have to raise prices agin, etc. Now they are heading towards borderline high end exotica. It is a shame Lotus did not adopt the opposite policy: only build one model which many more could afford to buy. Then offer aftermarket upgrades, like Ford in USA do. They seem to go from grand plans to bust over and over. FFS, just make ONE SIMPLE CHEAP CAR. Forget high end. Forget making a whole range.

Something tells me this will go on forever. Maybe Ginetta or Caterham will take over where the Lotus Elise mk1 left off and put Lotus out of their misery.
Lovely idea, but there's no such thing as a cheap car. "Cheap" relative to other cars maybe. Not "cheap" in the sense that you can sell large numbers to people for whom the cost is within disposable income, which is what you need if it's going to be cheap and purist.

The MX-5 survives because it can be an only car. Boxsters and up survive because they don't need to sell many with that profit margin.

Impasse

15,099 posts

240 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
VW binned loads of jobs recently, so did Microsoft. I expect they'll be closing soon too.

B10

1,226 posts

266 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
It would help if:
1. They had a proper car configurator on their website.
2. Prices on their website.
3. Replied to emails about a potential purchase.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
paranoid airbag said:
The MX-5 survives because it can be an only car.
It's not that much more practical than an Elise, though it is more civilised. It seats two and has a small boot. The key thing is that it is hugely mass produced and therefore cheap.

SeanyD

3,372 posts

199 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
How about a small engine eco friendly mass produced car, Elise chassis and bodywork, but introduce the Proton production line to bring the cost right down. A beautiful, desirable, insurable and economic car. Bringing some much needed sales and revenue.

... Leaving Hethel to hand make the high performance models at a marginal profit/loss.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
The problem with that is that the Elise's construction is not conducive to economical large scale production when compared with pressed steel.

Inertiatic

1,040 posts

189 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
robertpaulson said:
Its a mental world, 'classics' shooting to the moon because nobody makes decent a analog manual sportcar anymore, yet the one company who does (imo a better driver than half the aircooled stuff out there) is about to fold due to the total lack of demand for the product in the marketplace, not sure price would make a huge difference either, the gt86/brz can be had new for 22k and thats still a massive sales flop
Speculators don't care about how the car drives though. They are just buying what's in-vogue to sell at a profit. A car could punch you hard in the testicles with every gear change, but if it makes 20% profit its a good car...I do wonder if some of these classics ever actually physically change hands or whether they just sit in a storage unit and the V5 changes hands occasionally.

Sufficient people don't have sufficient spare money. Not enough to justify a sports car anyway that would probably need to be a 2nd or 3rd car and ideally needs to be garage stored. Those who do have the money need to "get" Lotus cars (e.g. be a "driver") and not just want something expensive for the driveway.

Brands like Ferrari / Lambo et al succeed because they operate in the bracket where there is enough money flowing to sell a few thousand cars a year...and lets face it they could build a car without an engine and people would buy it because it says Ferrari / Lambo on the front.

Its difficult for Lotus. Brilliant cars, but not enough people want a brilliant car, many just want a coupe/droptop/SUV (insert type of car) with a "prestige" badge so they can be "me too" when picking up the kids from school. Lotus, somehow, doesn't seem to fit the bill??


MJK 24

5,648 posts

235 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
John145 said:
MJK 24 said:
Someone on SELOC earlier this year bought a brand new Lotus Elise 1.6 for £26,000. When looking at the retail price index, that's slightly less than they were asking for the standard S1 back in the day.

Re the job losses - they're all from Lotus Engineering a company that does R&D work for other vehicle manufacturers. Having visited Hethel a few months ago, there was a thinly disguised Volkswagen Touran going in and out the gate all day long in addition to a large Hyundai and a 'Great Wall' whatever the hell that may be!

Re sales - people often look at UK sales and take those figures to be worldwide sales. The sales target for Lotus cars in 2014 is 2,000 units. They're going to hit this early around mid November. There was a open night at the Lotus dealer in Cheshire last night and they sold three new cars. Sales are doing fine and they were recruiting for the production line only a couple of months ago.
You know nothing...
Well that was a really constructive post.

saaby93

32,038 posts

177 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
I checked a few things
The base elise 1.6 has 134bhp. The original S1 had 115bhp
The price has changed from £26,950 for an S1 in 1996 to £29,950 today

Those figures dont look to bad?

MJK 24

5,648 posts

235 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
saaby93 said:
I checked a few things
The base elise 1.6 has 134bhp. The original S1 had 115bhp
The price has changed from £26,950 for an S1 in 1996 to £29,950 today

Those figures dont look to bad?
The launch price was £18,995 but this was raised quite quickly to £21,995 as demand was high.

Original Elise had 118bhp.


otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
bhp/ps confusion?

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
saaby93 said:
I checked a few things
The base elise 1.6 has 134bhp. The original S1 had 115bhp
The price has changed from £26,950 for an S1 in 1996 to £29,950 today

Those figures dont look to bad?
Indeed, in isolation the basic elise looks fine. But, and it's a big, juicy rounded fat but, main stream cars have lept forwards at a rate that hasn't just kept pace but rocketed upwards. This is particularly evident in terms of power and feature content.

Take a 1996 Golf Gti Mk3, wading into battle with a reasonable 150bhp in 16v format. Now fast forwards to 2014, and the Golf now has around 220bhp, and a level of feature content the original could only dream of.........

HeMightBeBanned

617 posts

177 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
Inertiatic said:
many just want a coupe/droptop/SUV (insert type of car) with a "prestige" badge so they can be "me too" when picking up the kids from school. Lotus, somehow, doesn't seem to fit the bill??
I'm the coolest parent in the carpark when I go to pick up my daughter from school in my 15 year old Elise. In a sea of German execs, coupes and 4WDs its my plastic toy that gets the admiring glances.

moribund

4,030 posts

213 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
Usual stuff spouted on every Lotus thread.

- Job losses apparently relate to Lotus Engineering, but instead of discussing those lets have 100's of posts about how the car section is struggling (it's not, they're recruiting).

- Lotus are at present selling every car they make with a waiting list. They are on target. So lets have 100's of posts about how nobody is buying Lotus cars (even though they are)

- The Elise saved the company, we need a new one. But the S1 Elise sold at a rate of 2000 per year. Same as now?

- Lotus need an MX5 competitor, with good NVH, carpets, dealer in every town etc etc. Really? Have you any idea of how much that costs?? And why do they if they can sell existing car range (see above)

- The new cars are too expensive. Yet adjusted for inflation they are exactly the same price as they were in the late 90's. If you want to see a car which is now more expensive for the same package, see Porsche not Lotus.

WTF do Lotus need to do to survive when we're all so keen to stab them in the back with ill informed crap, and we're the bloody enthusiasts??

robertpaulson

44 posts

145 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
Inertiatic said:
Speculators don't care about how the car drives though. They are just buying what's in-vogue to sell at a profit. A car could punch you hard in the testicles with every gear change, but if it makes 20% profit its a good car...I do wonder if some of these classics ever actually physically change hands or whether they just sit in a storage unit and the V5 changes hands occasionally.
Bit of a shame that 'drivers' cars are en-vogue isn't it!

I am hugely looking forward whatever caterham manage to drag out of the renault/alpine snafu. Surely a light, feelsome steering sports car with a fantastic sounding NA engine and an interior that doesn't look and sound like it was made from dogs toys and superglue at sub 40k would be a sales smash? or is it just us..

DonkeyApple

54,921 posts

168 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
Max_Torque said:
robertpaulson said:
yet the one company who does is about to fold due to the total lack of demand for the product in the marketplace
And the bit highlighted in bold is, i think, the important bit. British companies have successfully "re-invented" themselves for a new generation, and imo, Lotus must do the same. (ie JLR for example)

Now, when you have a profitable model in your portfolio, you can afford to make a few, less profitable NICHE vehicles, but without the solid profit basis, sorry, but the "fun" stuff is just not going to work out on its own.

In the last 20 years, the competition from more mainstream cars has become incredibly intense. When the Elise was first launched back in 1996, the competition was laughable, and fuel costs, taxation, environmental concerns, and to a large degree road conditions (traffic, speed limits, attitudes to speeding) were very different.

In 2014, the Elise now sits in a very small niche. It's for those very few people who will put up with what is an expensive, and not very practical car (in the real world) and one whos pure sporting intent has been enormously eroded by the competition. These days, pretty much every car you buy "go well and handles well". In 1996, a plain old Golf gti for example would have struggled to even see which way an Elise went, today, rather less so.


It's quite clear that Lotus have 3 options:


1) Try and find a massive investment partner and make the Bahar option of becoming a new "ferrari" work. (Lets be honest, this isn't going to happen)

2) Cut their overheads massively, to suit the few thousand elises they make, and just continue doing this until they go bust

3) Try something new.


The option for "new" that seems a great fit with Lotus is a lightweight, low drag, "Eco" sports car, which is also currently a gap in an otherwise crowded market. Think current Exige chassis with a Ford ecoboost 3 cyl engine at say 150bhp, with a 50kW electric motor for town driving, with some new "aero" body work. Nail a 2 seat £35k, 50g/km hybrid that is cool looking and fun to drive and i think you could carve a niche for oneself, a niche with a good future rather than a prospect that is almost entirely historical.


Edited by Max_Torque on Friday 19th September 11:25
Re 3, to get volume they would need a hatchback body option as well as sportscar. And frankly, a Lotus rival to the MInI and using hybrid tech would be rather delightful.

But, Lotus are in the same position as Aston. They have an enormous debt obligation which they can barely finance and without defaulting and restricting they have no way to do anything big or new. They are in the debt trap like so many firms that succumbed to the previous decade's MBA fuelled, asset stripping, debt loading practices.

vernz

179 posts

129 months

Friday 19th September 2014
quotequote all
I find the whole situation very sad, but when you look at say the Evora in detail, it becomes clear where the some of the problems are.

Take the base model at 53k for example. This has 5bhp more than a base Cayman and ignoring the 'claimed' 5.0 seconds 0-60 that none of the testers seem to be able to achieve, it's arguably 14k more expensive, for comparable performance and that's ignoring the MPG/emissions and build quality issues. In fact a lightly optioned Cayman S comes in at the same price. Add in the soulless lump of a Toyota V6, a very 911 ish rear weight bias/kerb weight and for most perspective buyers it's just too much to overcome.

The Evora S which for most would be a much better proposition, is priced so highly that it's then sparring with a 911 and even ignoring the whole boring Porsche verses Lotus argument, it's obviously putting enough people off.

I can't help thinking that a lot more people would be happy to take a punt on a 45k Evora or a 55k Evora S.

Also they could copy the Japs and throw in a few more extras.....we know these don't cost as much as the option price list would indicate and at least buyers could justify paying a slightly higher list price than the comparable German equivalent if they thought they were getting something extra in the deal.