A rather early obituary for Dany Bahar's tenure at Lotus

[Kimbers]

100% Agreed. Lotus have rarely made profit from a single car made. The economies of scale on numbers sold against development costs of a new model, for a company Lotus's size just doesn't make it possible. Whereas the likes of Ford can recover development costs of a mass market model in a couple of years (Just in time for an update or new model) Lotus can't.

What Lotus have always been good at, even in Colins time, was making profit from many and varied other sources.

Primarily, this has been Engineering based, but also includes merchandising, Servicing/repairing, Motorsport services, driving academy etc etc. Car parts really go hand in hand with vehicle sales so I omit them here.

Don't forget that when MJK took over for the second time Engineering was so run down that 90% of the work was in house. After signing up contracts in India, Middle East, China (Youngman) not to mention picking up business from Japan and other areas using his contacts, ENgineering really took off with the result of the group making money in 2008 with Engineering as the major profit contributor.

Making cars is what Lotus do to show off their engineering prowess, historically.