On today's Autocar website

http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/250659/


If this happens I for one will be sad, a while back a UK mag did a test of an Elise versus a Cayenne turbo S. A bit of a silly exercise but they were reasonably close on lap time. At the end of the report they made what I thought was a telling comment " The Cayenne is a very clever car, the Elise is a very intelligent one"

If the report is true I guess it is a victory for cleverness over intelligence, of course a real cynic might link this annoucement by the Proton bosses of Lotus to the possibly imminent investment stake of VW group in Proton!!

"Tomorrow’s luxury sports car, today"

uhooo. bad idea.

"the prices being justified by the use of technology including seven-speed twin clutch transmissions (fancy, costly and unnecessary, dropp it and you can get better lap times with those money elsewhere), active aerodynamics
(bad idea), continuously variable dampers (bad idea), hybrid (possibly a bad idea) and range extender systems (woot?), heads up displays (cool), and the option of more alternatively-fuelled variants.( no diesel opt!)

Well to be honest Chapman's dictum has been MIA for a long time.

They did make a big effort with Elise et al to pull weight out, but at the cost of making cars for dwarves.

Anyway, given the weight of all the secondary safety equipment these days there is no practical way of keeping the weight down, and the profit margins on the luxury stuff are much higher than on base vehicles. So yes, it is a bit sad but I think survival outweighs purity of vision. It also allows Lotus Engineering to strut their stuff, which has got to be a good thing.

It just sounds like every other manufacturer's philosophy really, but with a Lotus letterhead.

A Coupe Elise with some luggage compartment, a lower price and a lot more reliability would be a dream.
Money savings could be obtained by taking away the stupid driver's aids, on what is supposedly a Sportscar.

Instead, Lotus is going Lexus.

Puah.

It is very unfortunately telling a lot about Lotus and their business model if the statement about them not having turned a profit since 1996 is true. The Elise has been, relatively speaking, flying out the door since it's introduction. If they couldn't turn a profit then, I don't see any hope at all.

R.I.P. Lotus. May Protus die a miserable death making bloated luxury SUVs badged as Lotuses in India. Maybe the reason Proton can't make money selling Lotuses is because they as a socialist state owned entity are simply not very good at it. I expect a viable market will always exist for well engineered, truly lightweight sporting cars, even if nobody has the talent vision and means to profitably build for it.

saddest bit is proton is struggling with rediculous decisions and a complete lack of ability outside and inside malaysia yet it wants to move lotus philosophy...shocking. i remember months back lotus played with the idea of a lightweight 4 door saloon that seemed very clever with the current fuel prices and now proton wants to play with the idea of lotus being a luxury sportscar make? it seems that the ideas are going backwards and forwards towards the wrong corner. here is a car company that sells the chepest car for its class by at least a 20% margin in malaysia yet struggles eventhough the tax system significant bias them, making decision on lotus? there are even accusation by the public that the low tax bias on proton and high tax on other cars nearly forcing people to buy only proton is like a stab in the back to its own people because the quality is so so low. an uncle of mine swears a protons interior plastic is the same as a dustbin. imagine the profit margin but thats all they know unfortunately, very 1 dimensional. like a previous comment i made somewhere else, let lotus run proton and not proton run lotus.

a friend just bought a mini mpv called proton exora (sounds like evora doesnt it), handling and ride by lotus..true or false? well all i can say is that with the front weight bias they made the front suspension way too soft to sort out the handling. after a while the front drooped and is extra choppy..mmm certainy unrefined. if proton sells lotus, its a quick death for proton but not the other way round. btw, the top of the line proton is called a perdana v6, it is priced around the new mitsubishi lancer 2.0gt..it still looks like the 18 year old platform mitsubishi eterna it took over from..again, just thinking of the profit margins. they dont even dare to export this one.

Hmm. In my opinion from the other side of the world Proton have done a reasonable job with Lotus, up until recently. I must admit I can't see the fit between Lotus and the ex Ferrari glamour boys, who have effectively take over, but perhaps Lotus is regarded as a poisoned chalice or labour of love rather than an attractive gig for a senior exec.

The fundamental issue is that a volume of 100 cars a year is sustainable, as is 30-50000, but anywhere in between is very messy unless you can charge cubic dollars, and for whatever reason Lotus does not attract the same cachet as Ferrari or Lambo, so the profit margin just isn't there. Porsche is on a whole different level, volume wise, and they can still charge a premium compared with Lotus. Tain't fair, but that's the way it is.

So far as 'handling by Lotus', the way it used to be done was the customer OEM was given a single sorted car, and specs for all the changes, and a badge which they sometimes chose to fit, and sometimes not. Grin. However the customer was then free to change things again, buy shocks, engine mounts and tires (to pick three things that are very hard to duplicate) from a different supplier, and so on and so forth, and often didn't fit any structural changes. So the ultimate consumer wouldn't necessary get what had been developed in Norfolk.

I still can't figure how Pagani can stay in business.

Koenigsegg lives.. Just... they sold some 22-25 cars last year, mostly to the middle east.

Im pretty sure Pagani sold more than that.

Slightly off topic, but does anyone know Courage's annual budget? That is another operation I can't figure out.

pagani doesn't have time to introduce the zonda replacement as he has too many orders for zondas, even though he is over the initial quantity he wanted to make.. that is why we see all these special editions.. (cinque, etc..)

Basically up until now it seems Lotus has been under Lotus with Proton money. The Elise came to life under Romano Artioli and has been the life blood of Lotus since.

He's a low volume, 'bespoke' car assembler. If he prices the product above the input costs and can find buyers he will be in business forever. Morgan manage to keep their shop running, no reason Pagani cannot.


The replacement has got delayed first due to economy and then.....this. Anyway, it is not as if he faces a lot of competition in the $1 million car segment. So why hurry.

I think its fair enough that Lotus tries to make a profit, so I have no problem with them building some higher end cars to take on the established sports car big boys. But I think it would be a mistake to move away from lightweight chassis design. The future of car design will be intrinsically linked with reduced carbon emissions and weight is your enemy in achieving low emissions so I hope Lotus don't abandon their advantage for short term gain.

These companies typically barely survives, it's hard to make money on it. Koenigsegg have for example borrowed a lot of money from many different sources, including selling shares in the company. When they hired Volvos wind tunnel they payed them with shares.

Koenigsegg have had a very small development budget, in total something around 10-20 million euros, yet even selling cars for around one million euro each, this takes quite some time to payback. The cars aren't exactly cheap to manufacture either, and they have to pass all the same tests as regular production cars. which is something that is becoming increasingly difficult for small car manufacturers. To save money, Koenigsegg did all the crash tests with the same car which they repaired in between.



Most sportscar manufacturers use lightweight aluminum chassis, well, Porsche exempted but then we are talking about much higher volumes.

But most don't make "cheap" carbon fibre chassis.

According to BMW a carbon fibre component cost roughly five times of that of an aluminum component. That cost is hard to justify in most cases. It also makes recycling more difficult, something car manufacturers also are responsible for.

Racers are often rich suckers.

A mate makes a Can Am lite style in Macau (2 or 3 per year) and he should be embarrassed at his profit margins.