Bob Lutz, recently hired as a senior advisor to Lotus has told Autocar that he gives Lotus’s chances of success of at least 60% of launching 5 new cars, moving prices closer to the £100,000 bracket and increasing sales to over 6,000 units per year. Lutz, in an interview with Autocar said:
“People keep asking me if I’m sure the new plan will work, and of course I can’t guarantee that. It’s a risk. But I’m quite certain it stands a better chance than the Lotus status quo, which for sure would eventually lead this great brand into terminal decline.”
This is in reference to Lotus’s accounts for the last decade not showing much profit and only the highly respected Mike Kimberley, founder Colin Chapman’s right hand man and ex-Lamborghini Chairman steering the company back into the black during his recent return.
Lutz admits that Lotus’s backers are taking a gamble with their money but from what he has seen of the engineering going into the cars he’s confident that they’re going about their business in the right way. During his time at GM, Lutz would spend many times the entire Lotus budget on a single cars development but history shows us that Lotus have never needed huge budgets to produce ground breaking cars. CEO Dany Bahar is reportedly spending his way through a £770m investment budget with only the new Esprit currently under development out of the 5 cars. More money it seems is heading to the marketing department with the company now being a headline sponsor back in F1 along with plans to race in Le Mans, IndyCar, GP2 and GP3 and GT2, 3 and 4 classes all under the watchful eye of ex-Ferrari man Claudio Berro, now Lotus Director of Motorsport.
