Lotus Cancels Nearly All Of Dany Bahar’s Future Lotus Cars

[ekam]

Lotus Cancels Nearly All Of Dany Bahar's Future Lotus Cars

I'm glad these junk concepts are gone...

[thstone]

Lotus can't survive on their current lineup, can they? They have few options on how to grow sales. Seemed to me like they were following the Porsche model and going after affluent buyers even if it meant diluting the pure sports car nature of the brand and the cars. I would guess that the thinking went; if it worked for Porsche it could work for Lotus.

So, with the new concepts gone, where do they go from here?

[Overdrive]

The Esprit will survive, as it should, and continue to be developed. I'm sure they'll start down this same road again, but probably not as extreme.

Right now the only thing that's really available to us in the states is the Evora and its variants. The Elise/Exige is no longer available stateside. I'm sure it will be making a return, but I agree with some of what someone wrote in one of the Jalopnik article's comments:

- They should build some sort of luxo-sedan, stick with the lightness + performance formula, make it compete with the other 4-door unnecessaries out there like the Panamera. People, sadly, will buy it.

- Some sort of off-road capable vehicle. Again, for some reason, people will buy it even if it's just a street vehicle that might be able to run over a twig or two without flipping over. Hell, domesticate a LandRover and stick a Lotus badge on it for all I care. I may not like it, but in today's industry it's almost a necessity and it will be bought.

- A hot hatch. While this may be seen as a cheap car, much like there are people who want to see a baby Boxster, a small, sporty hatchback would sell and put the Lotus badge in front of a lot more eyes and in places that it normally wouldn't be. It's also a platform where they can easily achieve a well performing, lightweight car, with a price that's not as high as the most recent Red Bull space jump. It won't be as barely streetable as an Elise, but it will be nearly as trackable and be able to pull grocery-getting duty and baby-shuttling duty for those who choose to do so with it. And this last part is entirely my opinion, but they could revive the Elan name easily with such a car. The 90s Elan was essentially an Isuzu if I remember right, so I imagine you can't do much worse than that if you were to bring the name back today.

Of all the things mentioned there, the last one really seems the most important to me. The sedan will appease the high rollers, the Crossover/"Utility Vehicle" thing will appease the trophy wives and uber rich soccer moms, and the hot hatch will be the high volume lifesaver so that cars like the Elise and Exige can be made, and made well.

I'm glad Bahar's gone, and Lotus is one of my favorite marques, so I truly hope they manage to sort themselves out and hang in there for a while longer.