Lotus. Future secure?

obsessive rules
NOOO¡ Lotus have gone into administration. This is a sad day :(

Never mind. Lola, even still it's sad.
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Word is it isn't as serious as it sounds for Lola and I think they can be quite confident of finding investors/buyers because of their extensive composites company. Its just unlikely they are going to be doing as much racing (particularly not F1) in the near future.
A real shame as Lola have produced a great line of racing cars lately - one of the more consistent chassis builders.

On the brighter side Vauxhall obviously just got a boost in the UK and JLR still seem to be doing extremely well.
 
exigeracer
None of the Toyota-powered Lotus have been particularly pleasing, exhaust-wise. The only exception I can think of is the 2ZZ with a quiet exhaust and aftermarket supercharger. It sounds like (and looks like, I guess) an electric RC car.
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Agreed to an extent. With a standard exhaust mine sounded like crap and really didn't suit the car. I fitted what is essentially a motorbike muffler and it is better but does sound a bit like a 4cyl ricer. Though once you hit cam change it is absolute music to your ears (deafening too though). Am planning to change a few things before summer though which should affect the exhaust note.
 
http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/dany-bahar-interview

Apparently Bahar hasn't done enough, a user of topgear.com said
"What a pathetic list of achievements, I bet proton are just waiting for the right moment to fire him."

Agreed? Er. Not for me, any CEO who commissions 5 all new cars when the range of current cars is just 3(new v6 Elise/Exige included) from a company on the brink of death deserves more recognition.
 
I actually wanted to see Proton fire him as soon as possible because.. Seriously, what he has done to Lotus Cars? Use all of their money for his uber-optimistic motorsport project? Release 5 concept cars to public in which 2 or 3 of them have absolutely no interest from the public? Now that they've ran out of money, he seeks for help and I just don't know what will happen now.

He is just a super-optimistic CEO thinking he could turn around Lotus into Ferrari in around 2-3 years - which have now failed.
 
obsessive rules
any CEO who commissions 5 all new cars when the range of current cars is just 3(new v6 Elise/Exige included) from a company on the brink of death deserves more recognition.
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Any CEO that commissions 5 new models from a company on the brink of death should be fired on the spot, unless they all happen to be something insanely great, which none of the new Lotus' seem to be. Start with 1 new model and work from there, they aren't in a position to go on a full out assault.

As for recognition, he is getting all kinds of it, most of it happens to be bad.
 
obsessive rules
Agreed? Er. Not for me, any CEO who commissions 5 all new cars when the range of current cars is just 3(new v6 Elise/Exige included) from a company on the brink of death deserves more recognition.
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I would go even farther than InvincibleM5 and say that only one of those cars anyone cared about, and it happened to be the same one Lotus had already been working on for years that he inherited when he got the company so he had nothing to do with it. His actions killed a business relationship that had been going for over 10 years before he joined the company (a business relationship that Lotus needed if they wanted to have any chance of even getting the one car out), alienated the people who have a personal attachment to the company, and made it clear from the start that he didn't know what Lotus even was as a company by the first press release he had put out.


The best recognition he could get is if they toss his ass out.
 
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obsessive rules
I think Bahar has made a mistake but, who would replace him?
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Roger Becker.

Lotus can accomplish a lot if it considers itself as an engineering company that produces automobiles. Put an engineer at its helm and beef up its marketing department instead of being led by a marketing type like Bahar. This would guarantee a solid product, and getting it to market with a different team.

Realistically, Roger is too old for the position, however there have been many many engineers that have worked for Lotus that would be fit for the position. Russell Carr would also be a good fit.
 
Ardius
Why should Bahar stay?
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I feel he's done a good job, despite wasting the money. He attracted people from AMG, Ferrari etc. and they don't feel it was a wasted trip to Norfolk.

I can think of 3 ways of saving money.
1. iStream. It can make sports cars
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2. Release the Ethos and Esprit first to make money.
3. Leave SOME motorsports. Most customers will be uk based and not many people have even heard of indycar, so that's pointless. Le mans is plausible. F1, 2 lotus teams. Waste of money. Alm. Errr. Will America ever respect the pluck Brits? Maybe this will help... Maybe.
 
But he's taken the company from one of its highs (2008) to a brand new low. Things were looking good before he arrived. I can't see how he's been beneficial to the company at all.

Bahar seems to me to be a guy you would hire if you have loads of cash and you want a marketing guy who isn't afraid to spend it. That worked for Ferrari and Red Bull as they have very deep pockets. Lotus never had the money for it and probably this whole mess is what has caused Proton to get rid of it - which was Lotus' life source!
 
Lotus will fail and die soon if they don't realize they can't play the big boy game. The elise is the only sports car they should be making, the city car should be just one of many normal cars they make, and somewhere in the mix they need to re-think the company goal.
IMHO, the big dogs of the supercar world are so embedded that Lotus will always be left out in the cold unless they release a car so incredible it forces them into the circle (but we all know that would not be profitable and in the end it would only hurt them more).

I'd say their best bet is the Elise and a yet to be released BRZ competitor. It also wouldn't hurt is they used the sports car know-how on a normal car (something with 4 doors and rwd). Maybe fill a spot in the market where there is a void instead of pouring out one more overpriced supercar.
 
Kent
a yet to be released BRZ competitor
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Interestingly, there'll be precedent in the market for something along those lines, and I'm not talking about the BRZ itself.

UK sports car company Ginetta has started selling the G40R, a front-engined, rear-drive, light-weight, basic, closed-roof sports car. It's got a Ford Duratec engine and the gearbox from an MX5. Similar performance to an Elise. Think of it as a BRZ made according to the Lotus formula.

If that does okay (and Ginetta have been doing very well recently, not harmed by providing two whole grids of cars to support the BTCC), then it may suggest that a similar concept would work for Lotus.
 
homeforsummer
Interestingly, there'll be precedent in the market for something along those lines, and I'm not talking about the BRZ itself.

UK sports car company Ginetta has started selling the G40R, a front-engined, rear-drive, light-weight, basic, closed-roof sports car. It's got a Ford Duratec engine and the gearbox from an MX5. Similar performance to an Elise. Think of it as a BRZ made according to the Lotus formula.

If that does okay (and Ginetta have been doing very well recently, not harmed by providing two whole grids of cars to support the BTCC), then it may suggest that a similar concept would work for Lotus.
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What are Ginetta's sales figures? Do they make over 1000 cars annually? Not only does Lotus want to play a role in the mass-produced market, but they're already so in debt that don't have a choice. Going the small-timey route hasn't really been in Lotus' plans for 3 or 4 decades and isn't an option anymore.

I think of more interest is how they get to those figures - they've been trying to climb the price point, but their build problems don't suit that move. Maybe they should be moving down market and appealing to the 20-somethings with Miata-like sports-oriented cars (roadster, hatch, small sedan). There is volume one the bottom half of the field and easily influenced by marketing schemes (although the last thing I'd like to see is a Lotus drift car *shudder*).
 
Sheesh, I hope that 'guy' know what he has done... Why he's being suspended and all. I hope to not see him back in Lotus anytime soon.
 
exigeracer
What are Ginetta's sales figures? Do they make over 1000 cars annually? Not only does Lotus want to play a role in the mass-produced market, but they're already so in debt that don't have a choice. Going the small-timey route hasn't really been in Lotus' plans for 3 or 4 decades and isn't an option anymore.
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Upon further research, Ginetta's volumes are much smaller (150 race cars a year, target of only 100 G40Rs a year), so I suppose from a trend-setting point of view the figures will be fairly meaningless.

That said, I think the basic concept that Ginetta is going for with the G40R could be done well by Lotus, and probably for less money than the ~£30k that Ginetta wants to shift G40Rs at.

Maybe they should be moving down market and appealing to the 20-somethings with Miata-like sports-oriented cars (roadster, hatch, small sedan).
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There's something in this, as when the Elise was first released it was £21k. That's still a decent chunk of money but it's also more attractive to younger buyers at that kind of price. Ideally, they'd go even cheaper. For the RWD coupe I talked about above something around the £20k mark would be grand. Less for an MX5-like roadster.

I'm not sure Lotus should necessarily be playing about in the hatch/saloon market much, though it wouldn't hurt to be a more visible presence as a chassis/engine tuner for a big manufacturer - Toyota, for example, since they supply engines to Lotus.

Dunno about anyone else, but I'd like to see what Lotus could do with something like the Yaris. A Yaris hot hatch would probably bring down the average age of Yaris owners by 20 years. Lotus would be happy, as their name would be flying out of the showrooms on a great handling little car, and Toyota would be happy as all those awful animated adverts they've been doing would at least tally with the sort of people buying a Lotus Yaris.
 
Is there bad blood between Lotus and Toyota now, though? Maybe with Bahar finally being ousted, this is moot, but it seemed to me like the reason the engine deal fell apart for the future models was because of something nasty happening behind the scenes.
 
Toronado
Is there bad blood between Lotus and Toyota now, though? Maybe with Bahar finally being ousted, this is moot, but it seemed to me like the reason the engine deal fell apart for the future models was because of something nasty happening behind the scenes.
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Dunno. If any bad blood was Bahar-related then hopefully his suspension will help with regard to any future partnership.

I've just been having thoughts about Lotus-tuned GT86s though, which would be all kinds of awesome.
 
Hun200kmh
Serious version by autosport
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I think you have to take everything Autosport says about Lotus with a grain of salt. Lotus sponsors the Autosport International Show, and the magazine runs some very pro-Lotus stories. They've made headline news out of stories other publications didn't even bother to report, like Eric Boullier claiming Romain Grosjean can be a World Champion. Speaking of, here's one such article which contradicts the team's statements about how they are uncertain about their chances in Monaco. Reading that article on Bahar, it feels like Autosport have reported it because they have to, and it minimises any negative effects of Bahar moving on. That's where Sniff Petrol's parody of Bahar as a martyr comes from.
 
"Says here you spent nearly $500 Million on Race Car sponsorship..."
"Yeah..."
"Why did you put that on expenses rather than 'Advertisement'? "
"Because we all know it wasnt. Come on. Get real. I just wanted that sick paint on all the cars"
 
I consider that news - "future secure" :lol:.

I can't believe it took a change of ownership and 3 years to realise this was a bad move. But its not too late and Evora is still a good product. They have a chance to recover.

Sounds like the rest of the management related to Bahar is on its way out too.
 
I wonder what people would say about Bahar's plans if they had started this year and they hadn't gone through the legal woes of 2011 - ie, Bahar comes on-board, starts sponsoring the team, who net Raikkonen and Grosjean and start challenging for podiums and threatening to win races. I'm guessing that this was the way things were supposed to go all along, so I'm wondering what the response would be if everything had gone according to plan.
 
No, I didn't.

I think Bahar was effectively trying to reboot Lotus. Yes, it's a risky strategy, but the idea - ignore what actually happened for the moment - was that the company would invest in racing teams the world over and give the brand a level of exposure that it had never really experienced before. They would have the likes of Kimi Raikkonen driving the E20 and fighting for podiums, and so on. And once the Lotus teams showed themselves to be successful, they would launch their updated range of cars that would then sell because everyone would see Lotus' success and want to buy their cars. Bahar would turn Lotus into a racing team that happened to build road cars.

Of course, that was what was supposed to happen. What actually happen was well and truly off-script - they lost Robert Kubica to injury early on, the R31 rapidly fell down the grid as the season went on, they were embroiled with a crooked Russian banker, the engine they supplied to Indycar teams was down on power, they humiliated Jean Alesi and Simona de Silvestro at Indianapolis, their planned Exige R-GT rally car never eventuated, and the only categories in which they experienced any degree of success were the series like GP2 and GP3 that don't get widespread exposure. It was basically Murphy's Law: anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.
 
/Late rant.

It seems modern Lotus have suffered "second album" syndrome. The Elise and Exige were wonderful cars, and put the company back on the map but a blank-sheet replacement has been way, way too long in the making. It couldn't have been indicated any clearer than the mass of special editions that were released for both models.

The Europa was a bad joke (though financially a non-issue), and the Evora has proved very competent. But it doesn't seem to have really stamped a place in the market.


PM's points are all valid, but I think there was another huge floor in the race-on-sunday, sell-on-monday ideal they seemed to be trying to revive. None of the new models were raw enough to justify a "racing" pedigree or premium enough to incorporate "racing" technology. I just don't think the consumer would see the correlation.
 

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