Lotus chief looks beyond Proton

Proton has been propping up Lotus cars for many years and has emerged as a key player in funding the British sports car company’s ambitious new product plans.

It has put GBP100m behind the new Lotus models announced last year at the Paris motor show but Proton is unlikely to keep pouring cash into its British affiliate.

Lotus chief executive Danny Bahar said: “Smaller companies will need to be associated with bigger groups to benefit from economies of scale particularly as emissions and safety legislation gets tougher.

“Will Proton be our long term partner? Who knows, our products are very different. Maybe someone like the VW Group which has performance vehicles such as Bugatti orBentley, could benefit from synergies with a company like ours.

“Proton has spent a lot of money on Lotus, probably a lot more than they would have liked and I am sure that one day they would like to see that money back.” 

Lotus stunned Paris show-goers last September by unveiling five new models, the Elise, Elite, Esprit, Elan and Eterne, as well as a concept city car, which will all be on sale by 2016. 

They will be the result of a GBP500m, five-year business plan and Bahar said that funding is now in place as of the end of March.

In addition to Proton’s GBP100m, Lotus has taken GBP270m in loans from Asian banks while the rest will be funded from sales of existing models and work carried out by Lotus Engineering.

The city car will be jointly developed with Proton which will give the Malaysian company a global small car and Lotus a sporty little ‘un, just like Aston Martin’s Cygnet, based on the Toyota IQ.

Bahar said the Paris show car was also underpinned by the little Toyota but Proton and Lotus have now developed an all-new platform for the car which is due to be launched in 2014.

Bahar also said that feedback from Paris was behind the decision to drop one of the five cars revealed at the show.

He said: “There were three main issues – two of the products, Esprit and Elan, were too close. Both two-seat, mid-engined sports cars but actually their performance was very similar. So, we have kept Esprit and moved Elan to a second cycle to be produced at a later date.”

Bahar revealed that there was also a lot of strong feeling about the engines the company planned to use.

“Feedback told us the Yamaha-developed unit was just not ‘Lotus’ and so we embarked on a project to develop our own family of engines, V8, V6 and eventually an in-line four. There is obviously a big cost involved in going down this route, but by putting back the Elan that has given us more capital expenditure headroom.

“We are developing something along the lines of the Ferrari V8. The project was started in November and we plan to have the first prototype running in July.”

A third issue raised out of Paris was whether Lotus needed a four-door model - the Eterne grand tourer. 

Bahar said: “We can argue about that forever. From my point of view, we are spending GBP130m on a front-engined platform and so we want to get as much out of it as we can, including variants such as a four-door.”

With headquarters remaining in rural Norfolk, does Lotus have trouble attracting top quality engineers? Bahar said: “Not really. Norwich is not a bad place and it now even has a premiership football team. We have been able to attract people from companies such as AMG and Porsche because we can offer a job where they can be hands-on and really make a difference in terms of rebuilding the company.

“We might not be able to match the wages of bigger companies but we offer the challenge of reviving a sleeping giant.”

What about F1 aspirations? Bahar says that it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. “We don’t have to run the show. We can provide the cars and the technology for an experienced team. Our job is to add value not finance the team. If we couldn’t afford it we wouldn’t do it.”-.just-auto.com