Paris: New Elise, Elan, Elite, Eterne and Esprit

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ExigeEvan
But they don't exactly have a good reputation, or experience, for doing it.

I can understand why they haven't though, if the skills are available from (hopefully British) contractors who would probably need to employ further anyway I don't see why the government should have to assist.
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IMO they don't need reputation or experience. Just money. They're happy to bail out the Northern Rock following management and investor mistakes (an outcome that has virtually no return) yet won't even loan money (with fair potential for return) to a well-known British business to give the country something to be proud of?

Yep, that's British government for you.
 
homeforsummer
IMO they don't need reputation or experience. Just money. They're happy to bail out the Northern Rock following management and investor mistakes (an outcome that has virtually no return) yet won't even loan money (with fair potential for return) to a well-known British business to give the country something to be proud of?

Yep, that's British government for you.
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But the government were rightly criticised for pumping money into Northern Rock despite the good it may or may not have done, so why carry on along those lines?

And government loans are never no-strings-attached. It could be used as leverage to improve efficiency beyond what Lotus see as manageable, or meet a minimum employment figure which may eventually be more than Lotus need, leaving them with severance packages they can ill afford.
 
ExigeEvan
But the government were rightly criticised for pumping money into Northern Rock despite the good it may or may not have done, so why carry on along those lines?
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You're only partly following. Northern Rock was a bailout. Any money it gave to Lotus would be a loan. Loans (in theory) get repaid. It could even be an investment if they wanted. Either way it's not like Lotus have got themselves into too sticky a situation and need to be rescued.

And government loans are never no-strings-attached. It could be used as leverage to improve efficiency beyond what Lotus see as manageable, or meet a minimum employment figure which may eventually be more than Lotus need, leaving them with severance packages they can ill afford.
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This is true.
 
homeforsummer
You're only partly following. Northern Rock was a bailout. Any money it gave to Lotus would be a loan. Loans (in theory) get repaid. It could even be an investment if they wanted. Either way it's not like Lotus have got themselves into too sticky a situation and need to be rescued.
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Northern Rock was nationalised. The government will make their money back on it before it returns to being private.
 
I'm really pleased Lotus are bringing back the Esprit, I loved the old Esprit. The new one looks fantastic, if I had the money I'd be ordering one in the blink of an eye. 620 horsepower is a lot to be excited about.
 
I know somebody who works in Vauxhall's administrative arm, they have close ties directly to Opel and the OPC/VXR team. He told me that some guys from Lotus were stating a top speed of 212mph for the new Espirit!!!

:eek:

So when I shouted "BULL****!" in suprise, he reminded me that there would likely be some sort of GT version at a later date!!!

:eek::eek:
 
The new Esprit is sounding even better. I'm glad they're just focussing on the Esprit to begin with, the sooner it's out the door the better.

Autocar
Esprit 'only Lotus in development'

The all-new Lotus Esprit is the only one of Lotus’s range of sports cars and supercars to have serious engineering work undertaken on it.

Lotus insiders have told Autocar that the firm is focusing “fully” on the new Esprit at this stage, which is set to be the first of the new Lotuses launched in 2013.

The range of new Lotus models, which new Lotus CEO Dany Bahar insists will employ the purist engineering principles of lightness and simplicity pioneered the earliest Lotuses by the company’s founder, Colin Chapman, will take the company from annual production of around 2700 sub-£40,000 cars, to between 6000 and 7000 cars costing between £80,000 and £120,000.

Powered by a Lotus-supercharged 5.0-litre Lexus V8 (revving to 8000 rpm and producing 550bhp or 620bhp in the R version), the new Esprit will have a seven-speed paddle-shift gearbox, a KERS system, a 0-62 mph time of between 3.2 and 3.5 seconds and a CO2 output of just 250 g/km — very low output for the class and consistent with Lotus’s intention of offering the most efficient cars in their classes.

The car’s kerb weight of 1495 kg doesn’t make it quite the featherweight of past Lotuses, but engineers insist it’s lighter than class contenders.
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I'm glad they're doing this one at a time. They had to ditch working on the Esprit a few years ago to focus solely on the Evora, which paid off. The car is excellent and will only do better with a revised dealer network and world-class marketing pushing it.

I got worried during Paris that four new models would be far too much to handle, considering it took two years to release a car with the entire automotive branch devoting everything to it.


Philly
So does this mean that a new Elise won't be for sale? Or did they find another engine for that car?
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All Euro Elises are now specced down to the Elise S: the base 1ZZ Toyota motor. The fate of the Exige and 2-11, which both relied on the now-outlawed 2ZZ, is still rather unclear for the Euro market. I'm guessing they'll keep the Exige Cup260 and 2-11 around with the 2ZZ but no longer offer the street package and keep selling them as track-only racers. As far as I'm aware, the 2ZZ will still be used in Federalised cars, both Elise and Exige.

This article is mentioning development. They aren't near production yet, so they have the capacity to keep producing the Elise platform, and begin ramping up Evora production once demand increases. The numbers that Lotus is talking about aren't possible in the Hethel plant, and they weren't given any governmental loans to expand. This will likely bring back the debate about where to produce this larger volume of vehicles. Proton can probably rent them out a corner in Malaysia or something; their plants are rumored to have a one million unit per year capacity.
 
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they all look the freaking same. Ugh. No new Lotus for me. I'll always love the Esprit V8 and the Exige S 260
 
Sounds like Lotus is still on track to launch the Esprit in 2 years but they have a lot of work to do!

Auto Express
Dany Bahar: Q+A

Auto Express talks to the Lotus CEO at Geneva about building a new V8 engine and having a working Esprit prototype running by the end of the year

car_photo_428491_7.jpg


At the Paris Motor Show in October last year you unveiled the new range of supercars, including the new Esprit. What has happened since then?

We've been taking on board all the feedback from prospective customers at the show and continuing development. We are on course to launch the Esprit to market in 2013.

What feedback did customers give you?

They thought that the Elan and the Esprit were too similar in the way they looked, that the new Elise was too heavy and that a Toyota V8 engine [Lotus initially said it would use a supercharged Lexus IS-F V8 for the Esprit, Elite and Eterne] did not fit in a car in that segment at that price point.

So how have you addressed these 'problems'?

We have completely redesigned the front end of both the Elan and the Esprit so that they are now more separate.

And what about the engine? Isn't the Lexus IS-F V8 a good enough powerplant already...and isn't developing your own engine enormously expensive?

We are committed to developing our engine from scratch. That is a definite. Yes, there probably is no need for a bespoke engine, but it is crucial to Lotus as a supercar manufacturer. The Toyota engine would be very difficult to adapt to our needs anyway, and this would take a lot of money. For sure, it will be even more expensive to develop our own engine but this is what we and our customers want. We will still be able to hit the targets set out before [a 542bhp 'entry-level' version and a 612bhp 'R' version].

The Esprit is set to be the first of the new cars to go on sale. How is it developing?

We are on course to get a prototype running by the end of the year, but we will not be showing off the new, re-style look just yet.

How is the re-development of Hethel going? Have you secured government grants to help build a new UK-based manufacturing facility?

We have submitted our application to the UK government and expect to hear by the end of March whether we will recieve extra funding for a new factory. But we already have our own money to invest and upgrade the facilities at Hethel. The government money is the difference between us building two production lines in Norfolk or four.

What if you don't receive government money?

Then we will have to go outside the UK to Europe where we are nearer suppliers. We have already been in talks with factories in Austria [Magna Steyr] and Finland [Valmet, which builds the Porsche Boxster].
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So the Elise isn't any lighter, production is quite likely to go abroad and we've still got a massive wait for the Esprit.

Kind of wish you hadn't posted that :grumpy:





But thanks 👍
 
I was more concerned about production possibly moving abroad if the government doesn't give them a grant which is pretty unlikely.

He didn't say they weren't doing anything about the Elise's weight following feedback but he also didn't say they were!

Better get the Esprit right than rush it out the door and there will be a restyled Evora in the interim...I am finding it increasingly difficult to keep positive about the new direction the more I think about it though.
 
Neal
I was more concerned about production possibly moving abroad if the government doesn't give them a grant which is pretty unlikely.
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You really think that the way government funding is currently they're going to support such a grant?
He didn't say they weren't doing anything about the Elise's weight following feedback but he also didn't say they were!
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He completely avoided the question, which is quite a politically blunt way of saying no.

Better get the Esprit right than rush it out the door and there will be a restyled Evora in the interim...I am finding it increasingly difficult to keep positive about the new direction the more I think about it though.
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It just feels like the Esprit replacement has been in the works for a decade. Which is probably skewed enormously by speculation that has been strife throughout, but 2 years seems an awful long time.
 
No, I meant it's unlikely they'll get the grant so production probably will move abroad...which is not good!

To be honest I read the same into him avoiding the weight issue but we can live in hope. Actually aren't they all going to be built on the same platform so it's unlikely the Elise will be acceptably light.

It feels like new Esprit's have been in the pipeline for much longer than that but afaik this one isn't based on any previous developments so the timescale isn't that bad. The expectation will be huge though so it best be good enough to match the likes of the 458 and 12C.
 
I don't know if I can really consider Lotus Cars the same company anymore the way its going, is anything actually carrying over at all other than the name? Moving production elsewhere irks me quite a bit.
 
What's GTP's take on the Lotus Evora Bespoke? I don't have the details on what the business partnership is, nor how it will bring in more buyers, but it is a significant redesign of the Evora. If anything, it shows that Mansory can actually keep its pants on.

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I might be alone isnsaying this, but I can't say I'm a big fan of the designs. They look very plain and generic, not nearly as handsome as the Esprit or Exige of the past.

That said I wasn't much of a fan of the Evora either, it just does nothing to excite me...
 
Eh...the Evora might look good if it were a performance model. The standard version is really clean and nice, but that looks like it should be packing some heat. Especially with that rear diffuser...holy cow.
 

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