Future of Lotus

[Arregueti]

Probably unfeasible due to lack of financial partner but IMO it would help to boost sales in the short term if they extended the 50:50 UK offers to other countries in Europe. Just like they did with the 333 recent offer or the SR itself which is only available in UK & Europe....

[NedaSay]

Russell Car is back to the top design job, Donato Coco is out. 

 

http://www.thelotusforums.com/latest-news/lotus-cars-news/russell-carr-appointed-to-head-of-design-at-lotus/

[Bibs]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/the-10-car-companies-that-lost-in-2014/

 

Not a great list to be on (esp not twice!).

 

Fingers crossed for 2015.

[hedgerley]

Of course its not good to see sales fall, but this is only the UK. The global picture for Lotus is much better - this figure represents only about 12% of total sales if the global figure is over 2000, which is much better than the previous year. And they don't even mention the Exige S!

 

And come on, Geneva 2010 is now almost 5 years ago - change the record please!

[TBD]

Once again the question which data source was used. Its so early inn2015 that I can't imagine they are official figures for calender year 2014. Much mor likely based on the fiscal year of the manufacturers -which in case of Lotus would mean April 2013-March 2014.

 

We had the same discussion last year around this time, when Lotus figures for 2012/2013 were published officially. 

[Bibs]

They probably are those figures, in which case it's inaccurate reporting. Lotus are on target for 2,400 annual car sales worldwide from April 2014 to March 2015.

[TBD]

Actually, we can read the truth here : http://www.thelotusforums.com/latest-news/lotus-cars-news/lotus-records-its-best-half-year-car-sales-since-200809/ 

 

and definitively here: http://www.thelotusforums.com/latest-news/lotus-cars-news/lotus-sales-continue-to-grow-65-increase-for-july/

 

 

 

Group Lotus plc had its best month for sports car sales since March 2011, selling 226 cars in July – an increase of 65% compared to July 2013. The UK, up by 110%, and Germany, up by 83%, saw the strongest growth. In addition, as part of these results Lotus Motorsport grew its global sales by 100%.

 

If I remember correctly, it was the Telegraph with the same incorrect reporting last year.

[Mark Blanchard]

When people in the UK want to buy a sports car, they buy a Porsche.  That's what people aspire too, they're a bunch of sheep / morons if you aske me.  The Evora has provide it's one of the best handling sports car and the quality it better than an other Lotus from the past.  Those figures are very depressing if you ask me .

[Bibs]

JLR are hiring 1,300 people to build their first SUV...

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30772631

[Advantage]

That can't be right. Surely all their legions of fans will have told them that an SUV isn't the way forward.

[Bibs]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markewing/2015/01/21/can-lotus-blossom-again/

[NedaSay]

^^ I really liked reading this piece... It sounds both upbeat and grounded, no doom and gloom here, and it comes from Forbes. 

 

Reading that dealers are purchasing cars and funding their Lotus dealerships upfront is great to read and confidence inspiring for both investors and prospective car buyers, not to mention commercial partners and suppliers.

 

I really can't wait to see what they have in store for Geneva.

 

 

 

"very soon Evora will howl with the best sports cars." Gales, 2015.

Edited January 22, 2015 by NedaSay

[mdavies]

"very soon Evora will howl with the best sports cars." Gales, 2015.

 

As one-time "NA plus Radium" owners remember fondly!

[Bibs]

http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/lotus-boss-jean-marc-gales-future-2015-02-25

 

 

Lotus has a new boss. Well, nine months is not so new, but his first concrete results are only now emerging. We've driven the Elise S Cup and seen the Evora 400. They are pretty credible. So we went to Norfolk to spend the morning with him and hear his plan.

He's Jean-Marc Gales, a trained engineer who came to Lotus from big-shot marketing and management jobs at VW, Mercedes and PSA. He's also a bit of a mad lifelong Lotus fan, having collected the brochures as a young boy. The right combination of sentiment and expertise, then.

Almost the first thing he says indicates his philosophy for the cars. "Any car we launch in the next two years will be lighter and faster than its predecessor." He's talking about new versions of the Elise, Exige and Evora.

Are they just hard semi-track cars? Suspension suppleness on real-life roads is one of Lotus's crowning virtues. "The cars will be very advanced, but having nothing superfluous," he says. "They might lose some of the ride comfort they have now, though an Evora will still be comparable to a Porsche 911 in ride comfort. But the Evora 400 will gain massively on handling compared with now. I sleep very well at night knowing the engineers who sign-off the handling."

Evora 400 is the fastest Lotus ever

There will be obvious sales-boosting variants, including an Evora Roadster in about two years, and additional track-biased derivatives. The Exige will naturally be facelifted, and get the new 400 engine too.

Gales also says there has been demand for a successor to the 2-Eleven, and so one is under way for a launch less than two years from now. It has much more power than before and a new design. It will be by far the most expensive Lotus, but, with 400bhp to propel 900kg, "it will be the fastest road car around the Nürburgring," he bravely promises.

Should Lotus build its own engine? "There is absolutely no need. Why spend hundreds of millions on that? I can buy one and tune and calibrate it. We can tune this V6 [from Toyota] with our supercharger and management, for fantastic noise and response."

Wasn't there anything useable from the in-house V8 engine or new Esprit we were told about in 2010 and 2011? "Nothing," he shrugs. He says one example of the V8 was built but no running prototypes of the Esprit. "Don't invest £200 million in a new car when you haven't exploited the current one."

What about the aluminium structure under all Lotus cars? "The Evora tub meets regulations until 2020 and we will likely stay with aluminium beyond that. It's similar weight and strength to carbon fibre but one-third of the cost." He claims that the Lotus tub is just five kilos heavier than the Alfa 4C's carbonfibre structure. Besides, Lotus now owns the factory that builds its aluminium chassis and structures.

So that's his strategy. Dig in and keep it simple. Do what Lotus has been doing, but do it better.

Lotus has had a crazy history. Over the past two decades it never made money. It's been owned by GM, and the pre-VW Bugatti group, and Proton. Every time the boss changes, the strategy seems to change too.

Some of them propose moving the company upmarket to do luxury sports cars. That's what founder Colin Chapman did with the Excel and Turbo Esprit (which belies his reputation as the deity of simplification). Twice-boss Mike Kimberley pursued the same path. That's what Dany Bahar recently did with his five-car vapourware display at the Paris Show in 2010. Those guys said Lotus could never survive if it didn't sell more expensive cars.

Yet other Lotus chiefs have advocated simple, light, pared-back machinery. They say it's perfectly possible to make money with that sort of range, provided the company doesn't make basic mistakes.

Top Gear drives the Lotus Elise S Cup

Gales is in that latter camp. He sighs and lists some of the glaring omissions that led Lotus into a near-death experience by March 2013, just before he arrived. He says the loss was because the company kept on making basic errors.

There were no dealers in critical cities including Paris, Berlin, Monaco and Abu Dhabi. That's been remedied. "We didn't even have a customer database." Now they do. Sure enough, even before the new Evora has arrived, sales have shot up by more than 50 percent.

He expects to sell 3000 cars a year when the Evora 400 is fully on stream. And because they're faster and more powerful, they sell for more money. So Lotus revenue will be better.

He can also see ways to cut costs, again by avoiding basic errors. "We will launch on time, too. The Elise S Cup is the first Lotus ever that isn't late. Our new car for the Geneva show [the Evora 400] is finished early. This never happens here." And late launches knock a huge hole in cash flow. "Lotus didn't even have a program management team before. Can you believe it?" He's also got all Lotus employees to go through the cars and suggest ways of lightening and simplifying their components. The Evora 400 will take 60 hours fewer to build - that's 20 percent. It will also cost 10 percent less for Lotus to purchase its parts. And it will be lighter and higher in quality.

Of course the proof will be the execution, and it's hard not to keep thinking how often Lotus has wobbled in the past. I ask Gales what surprised him most in his early days in Norfolk. "I was surprised by the lack of process when I came here. I spent a lot of my time in German companies. It helps your discipline." A petrolhead with discipline. Just what Lotus needs.

[diego]

sorry im really struggling with this guy, hes starting to sound like a sound bite  sales man....

 

first he says the Evora400 will be the fastest sub £100k car on track and now to top that he says the following about a car that's 2 years away:-   

 

Gales also says there has been demand for a successor to the 2-Eleven, and so one is under way for a launch less than two years from now. It has much more power than before and a new design. It will be by far the most expensive Lotus, but, with 400bhp to propel 900kg, "it will be the fastest road car around the Nürburgring," he bravely promises.

 

in addition, not sure if any of you have sat in a 4c but hes comparing apples and pears. the 4c is massive compared to the elise inside and out (which is the chassis he keeps comparing it to  as apposed to the evoras)....so that should be 52kgs vs 116 kg ...

 

v odd... 

[LazyDonkey]

sorry im really struggling with this guy, hes starting to sound like a sound bite  sales man....

 

first he says the Evora400 will be the fastest sub £100k car on track and now to top that he says the following about a car that's 2 years away:-   

 

Gales also says there has been demand for a successor to the 2-Eleven, and so one is under way for a launch less than two years from now. It has much more power than before and a new design. It will be by far the most expensive Lotus, but, with 400bhp to propel 900kg, "it will be the fastest road car around the Nürburgring," he bravely promises.

 

in addition, not sure if any of you have sat in a 4c but hes comparing apples and pears. the 4c is massive compared to the elise inside and out (which is the chassis he keeps comparing it to  as apposed to the evoras)....so that should be 52kgs vs 116 kg ...

 

v odd... 

 

Aside form the fact he's already delivered on his promises made so far?

 

Dealers are getting cars on time, cars are arriving on time and exceeding expectations.   So far i'd say all the tangible things he's promised have materialised so why do we think that won't happen going forward ? 

[Tallic]

optimistically cautious

[Advantage]

The Radical SR8 currently holds the production car around the 'Ring record at 6:48.

[NedaSay]

By the sound of it the New Eleven is going to be quite some beast, a pure track monster just below 99k  probably GT4 compliant. I Hope the design will be a departure from Elige.  

 

Both Elise and Exige are going to get VVA underpinnings it seems, Exige already has the rear section while  Elise still uses it's own rear subframe. Both cars will benefit hugely from the change of platform imo. 

 

I hope JMG will be less shy in the future when it comes to tuning the Toyota internals, right now they barely touched the ECU and air intake...  Some special versions would warrant more in depth of an engine rework.

 

However if the cars are delivered on time and on budget  and the dealers are satisfied with what they get... This guy is what just Lotus needed a no bullshit can do attitude with enough savvy to stir the ship in the right direction.

[Bibs]

JMG told me you need $1bn to properly develop and build your own engine at this level. 

[TBD]

JMG told me you need $1bn to properly develop and build your own engine at this level. 

I would question that figure, but agree with JMG that the development is too expensive for Lotus. If you look at the Ricardo deal with McLaren you get a more reasonable idea of the development costs (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/10531573/Ricardo-signs-engine-deal-of-the-century-with-McLaren.html). These have to be recovered somehow, so $100-200 M sound more realistic. 

 

Now,  for the Toyota engine development that $1bn might be correct, if you include tooling and manufacturing systems. 

[LotusX180R]

I always figured the way to go for Lotus as it pertains to engines is to use one that they already did consulting work on.  It was smart to use the GM Ecotec in the Europa S, though it didn't seem that Lotus promoted he fact that they did the engine.  Don't know if the current Toyota V6 is a product of their consulting work, but it would make perfect sense if it was, and promoting as such would go some way to improving Lotus' image (if it was true).

[Khyber73]

all they needed to do was get the toyota engine and put lotus developed/modified cylinder heads on them ..alfa did that with the GM v6 engines. it would have diffrentiated the engines from the camry association

[NedaSay]

Alfa could do it cause they get the engines before they are finished and they get to play with the insides cause they'll sell these v6 by the 10s of thousands which is a lot easier to sell to the accountants and shareholders. Lotus needs to make it work by selling less than 3000 cars of which about a thousands are 4 cyl. The scale at which they operate means that they have to ask nicely or have the Toyota warranty void before a car leaves the factory.

[LazyDonkey]

Do we really think people don't buy an evora as it's got a camry engine ?