Cars / All things automotive

Geely is pouring billions into Volvo with fine results; we hope for the same here.

The Elise was the car that saved Lotus in the 1990s. It was affordable, utterly light, and a joy to drive. The bonded aluminum chassis architecture is still being used by Lotus today.

The Elise was the car that saved Lotus in the 1990s. It was affordable, enormously light, and a joy to drive. The bonded aluminum chassis architecture is still being used by Lotus today.

Perhaps the best-known Lotus? James Bond (played by Roger Moore) drove this Lotus Esprit on the road and underwater in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me.

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A more conventional-looking Lotus Esprit, this one from 1982.

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The Lotus Elan sports car was built inbetween 1962-1973. Emma Peel (played by Diana Rigg) drove one in The Avengers. (No, the real Avengers, not the superhero movies.) Mazda is unapologetic about the fact that the Elan inspired its blockbuster MX-5 sports cars.

The car that embarked it all, the Lotus Seven. This is a S2 car from 1965. Sold as a kit car (which meant a much cheaper tax bill in the UK), production was taken over by Caterham Cars in 1973, and you can still buy one today. True fact: the Lotus (or Caterham) Seven was the very first car I fell in love with, back in 1993. I’ve still never driven one.

After some regulatory problems with its airbags, the Lotus Evora four hundred ten is back on sale in the US once more.

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Graham Hill’s Lotus-Climax sixteen in the one thousand nine hundred fifty nine British GP at Aintree.

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Lotus was responsible for a lot of firsts in F1, not just wins, albeit there were slew, but also fresh ideas like ground effect aerodynamics, active suspension, and even sponsorship; before Lotus signed up tobacco company Gold Leaf, teams raced in their national colors. This is Emmerson Fittipaldi in his Lotus forty nine at the one thousand nine hundred seventy one German GP at Hockenheim.

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Lotus finished very first and 2nd in the one thousand nine hundred sixty six Indy 500. Graham Hill was recorded as victor over Jim Clark, albeit there was some controversy over the time-keeping and Clark may actually have been the true winner.

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In one thousand nine hundred sixty eight Lotus brought the four-wheel drive STP Oil Treatments Lotus fifty six Pratt and Whitney Turbine car to the Indy 500. Jim Clark is seen in the car in testing, but he was tragically killed in a Formula two race at Hockenheim. Mike Spence also lost his life testing a Lotus fifty six at Indy, but three cars were entered in the race for Graham Hill, Art Pollard, and Joe Leonard. Leonard almost won the race, but a fuel pump failure during the final few laps cost the car a victory.

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Colin Chapman inspects the back of Mario Andretti’s Lotus seventy nine R3/Ford Cosworth DFV in the pit lane during practice for the United States Grand Prix East on October 1, 1978, at Watkins Glen, Fresh York.

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Ayrton Senna aboard the Lotus 99T during the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1987.

Lotus maintains its own test track at its base in Hethel in Norfolk, England.

The two thousand thirteen Lotus Evora 414E, a plug-in hybrid concept version of the Evora, undergoing testing at Hethel.

Lotus is one of the most storied names in the automotive world. Since 1952, the company has been applying founder Colin Chapman’s maxim “simplify, then add lightness” to the car; along the way it has built spectacularly successful racing cars and sublime road cars. Yet despite those four-wheeled creations, times haven’t been effortless for the company. Following Chapman’s untimely death in 1982, it has switched ownership several times—most recently in one thousand nine hundred ninety six to Malaysia’s Proton—each with the promise of renewed investment, which often failed to materialize. That’s why the announcement on Wednesday that the Lotus is being bought by China’s Geely should be greeted as such good news.

Geely is buying 49.9 percent of Proton from DRB-Hicom. And as part of the deal, Geely also gets fifty one percent of Lotus. As stated, this isn’t the very first time Lotus has had a fresh corporate possessor; at one time it was wielded by General Motors, at another the same businessman who revived Bugatti Cars in the 1990s. So we can forgive any skepticism about this latest transfer of control. But one only need look at Volvo’s renaissance under Geely to see slew of cause for optimism. Geely has been pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the Swedish car company since buying it from Ford in 2010, money that Volvo has used to develop a fresh cutting-edge vehicle architecture resulting in some rather fine vehicles. The prospect of that kind of investment in Lotus is mouth-watering.

Everyone’s a winner

The deal also makes slew of sense for Geely. Yes, the stake in Proton opens up the South Asian market for it, but perhaps more significant will be Geely’s access to Lotus Engineering. This is a sister company to Lotus Cars, which operates as a consultancy for other automakers. With decades of practice with lightweight materials and architectures, vehicle treating and suspension optimization, efficiency, and electronics, Lotus Engineering has had an unseen mitt in many a vehicle on our roads. (Lotus also provided the chassis for the original Tesla Roadster, a deal that predated Elon Musk’s arrival at the company.) Geely now gets to apply that know-how to its own range.

But indeed, it’s the thought of Lotus ultimately having the cash to develop a decent lineup that’s getting us excited. After all, Lotus has had to make do with reusing the same bonded aluminum platform that very first appeared in the one thousand nine hundred ninety six Elise. Rather revolutionary at the time, it’s still in service twenty one years later under the composite bod panels of the Evora, Exige, Elise, and 3-Eleven.

Wait, don’t I reminisce a entire geyser of fresh models?

At the turn of the decade it appeared—briefly—as if Proton was eventually going to give Lotus the resources it needed to create an all-new line-up; at the two thousand ten Paris Motor Showcase, Lotus unveiled not one but five concept cars, some of which were decidedly unLotus-like. That strategy was the brainchild of Dany Behar, who had been hired to run Lotus from Ferrari where he was in charge of licensing and branding. Behar thought he could use Lotus’ heritage to funnel cash into the company in the same way as the Italian automaker; he opened up a number of merchandise shops around the world, and the name returned to Formula 1, albeit with no involvement from Group Lotus PLC beyond a license permitting the team to call itself Lotus. (That team is now the Renault F1 team.)

Behar was ousted in 2014, substituted by Jean-Marc Gales as CEO. Gales is a longtime Lotus aficionado, and under his tenure the company has just kept its head down and done the best it could with what it has, eventually relaunching the Evora in the US last year. Given Geely’s hands-off treatment of Volvo, we can expect something similar to happen with Lotus. It’s hard to see the company being content to stick with making low-volume, (relatively) affordable sports cars mainly for the UK and European markets. It’s even possible some of the ideas very first seen in Behar’s Parisian splash—including a hybrid sedan that would contest with the Porsche Panamera and Aston Martin Rapide—might come back. But we’d be ecstatic if it just managed to build a worthy successor to the Elan of the 1960s, the front-engined, rear-wheel drive roadster that went on to inspire the million-selling Mazda MX-5.

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