Lotus: the future - Lotus CEO Dany Bahar reveals that the Norfolk company is planning to build its own engines, and how it will finance a line-up of five new cars.
Lotus will announce a plan to build its own engines next year as part of what chief executive Dany Bahar calls “our super ambitious and aggressive expansion plan,” to launch five new road cars in the next five years as well as joining forces with the Renault Formula One team.
Lotus CEO Dany Bahar poses with the company's current flagship, the Evora
The Lotus Esprit supercar is due to be launched by the end of 2012
Three engines in total are planned: a V6, V8 and a four-cylinder, and the programme would run hand-in-hand with the development of motorsport engines for F1 and a previously announced commitment to build engines for IndyCar racing in the US. “The fact that we have announced that we will be developing an engine for IndyCar for 2012 shows you already that we are heavily interested in becoming an engine manufacturer with our own brand,” said Bahar. “We have the capacity. We build and design engines for other OEMs, so there is no reason why we cannot design and build engines for ourselves.”
The five-car model programme includes a £100,000 Esprit mid-engined supercar due at the end of 2012, a £70,000 Elan by the autumn of 2013, and by 2015, a £120,000 Elite front-engined supercar, a £35,000 Elise replacement and a £110,000 Eterne four-door super saloon. These models will all share the same basic underbody modular structure, which will debut on the Esprit in two years. In addition there will be a tiny city car project based on an existing concept from Lotus owner, Malaysian car maker Proton and another as yet unnamed car maker.
Bahar claims the required £800million funding for these cars is already in place from a variety of sources, including Proton, the banks and Malaysian oil giant Petronas. He says that although five new cars would normally require funding of more than £150million each to develop, the modular structure means the costs will only be “that of two and half new cars, which is about £500million.”
Bahar says there is about £500 million of new money in place and “with the Esprit and the city car arriving in 2012 and 2013, we are aiming at break-even by 2014. After that we will have to generate our own profit.”
“About 85 per cent of that money will go into new product development,” he says. “The rest will go into improving the site [at Lotus HQ in Hethel, Norfolk] and our motor racing programme.”
Bahar plans to recruit about 1,300 engineers in the next few years and has been in talks with the British Government about loan guarantees for the £50-60million cost of building new facilities in which to house them. “In the beginning the conversations were not fruitful, but a lot seems to have changed in the last two weeks,” he says. “We have talked to ministers and we understand the Government’s problems and we perfectly understand if they don’t choose to help us, but if they don’t, no one should complain if we chose to create 1,000 new jobs outside of the UK. At least we tried...”
At present Lotus has purchased a stake in the Renault F1 team for next year, although there is a possibility that there will be two Lotus teams because of a licence granted to Tony Fernandes to form Team Lotus, whose cars will also be on the grid unless the current court battle comes to a conclusion before the season start.
As for the wisdom of revealing an entire five-year product strategy in one go as Lotus did at the Paris Motor Show two months ago, Bahar remains unapologetic. “We will get on and engineer our new cars,” he says, “let others talk about us. We cannot take too much notice of things we cannot control.”
He claims that sceptics of the plan would be amazed to know that 65 per cent of the required supplier network is already in place for the new cars “and they are some of the world’s biggest suppliers,” he says. He is aiming to make Lotus profitable by turning it into a “British Porsche”, in reference to the successful engineering consultancies within both Porsche and Lotus, which in the past have kept the car-making operations afloat.
Bahar wants the engineering side to create at least one third of the company’s profits in future, with the other two thirds coming from building 6,000-7,000 road cars a year.
“In future we will be fighting in every sports car sector,” he says. ( telegraph.co.uk )
Lotus will announce a plan to build its own engines next year as part of what chief executive Dany Bahar calls “our super ambitious and aggressive expansion plan,” to launch five new road cars in the next five years as well as joining forces with the Renault Formula One team.
Lotus CEO Dany Bahar poses with the company's current flagship, the Evora
The Lotus Esprit supercar is due to be launched by the end of 2012
Three engines in total are planned: a V6, V8 and a four-cylinder, and the programme would run hand-in-hand with the development of motorsport engines for F1 and a previously announced commitment to build engines for IndyCar racing in the US. “The fact that we have announced that we will be developing an engine for IndyCar for 2012 shows you already that we are heavily interested in becoming an engine manufacturer with our own brand,” said Bahar. “We have the capacity. We build and design engines for other OEMs, so there is no reason why we cannot design and build engines for ourselves.”
The five-car model programme includes a £100,000 Esprit mid-engined supercar due at the end of 2012, a £70,000 Elan by the autumn of 2013, and by 2015, a £120,000 Elite front-engined supercar, a £35,000 Elise replacement and a £110,000 Eterne four-door super saloon. These models will all share the same basic underbody modular structure, which will debut on the Esprit in two years. In addition there will be a tiny city car project based on an existing concept from Lotus owner, Malaysian car maker Proton and another as yet unnamed car maker.
Bahar claims the required £800million funding for these cars is already in place from a variety of sources, including Proton, the banks and Malaysian oil giant Petronas. He says that although five new cars would normally require funding of more than £150million each to develop, the modular structure means the costs will only be “that of two and half new cars, which is about £500million.”
Bahar says there is about £500 million of new money in place and “with the Esprit and the city car arriving in 2012 and 2013, we are aiming at break-even by 2014. After that we will have to generate our own profit.”
“About 85 per cent of that money will go into new product development,” he says. “The rest will go into improving the site [at Lotus HQ in Hethel, Norfolk] and our motor racing programme.”
Bahar plans to recruit about 1,300 engineers in the next few years and has been in talks with the British Government about loan guarantees for the £50-60million cost of building new facilities in which to house them. “In the beginning the conversations were not fruitful, but a lot seems to have changed in the last two weeks,” he says. “We have talked to ministers and we understand the Government’s problems and we perfectly understand if they don’t choose to help us, but if they don’t, no one should complain if we chose to create 1,000 new jobs outside of the UK. At least we tried...”
At present Lotus has purchased a stake in the Renault F1 team for next year, although there is a possibility that there will be two Lotus teams because of a licence granted to Tony Fernandes to form Team Lotus, whose cars will also be on the grid unless the current court battle comes to a conclusion before the season start.
As for the wisdom of revealing an entire five-year product strategy in one go as Lotus did at the Paris Motor Show two months ago, Bahar remains unapologetic. “We will get on and engineer our new cars,” he says, “let others talk about us. We cannot take too much notice of things we cannot control.”
He claims that sceptics of the plan would be amazed to know that 65 per cent of the required supplier network is already in place for the new cars “and they are some of the world’s biggest suppliers,” he says. He is aiming to make Lotus profitable by turning it into a “British Porsche”, in reference to the successful engineering consultancies within both Porsche and Lotus, which in the past have kept the car-making operations afloat.
Bahar wants the engineering side to create at least one third of the company’s profits in future, with the other two thirds coming from building 6,000-7,000 road cars a year.
“In future we will be fighting in every sports car sector,” he says. ( telegraph.co.uk )
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