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Lotus Cars

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Lotus Cars

Lotus Cars

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 easy for the company. Following Chapman's untimely death in 1982, it has changed ownership several times—most recently in 1996 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.

Everyone’s a winner

Geely is buying 49.9 percent of Proton from DRB-Hicom. And as part of the deal, Geely also gets 51 percent of Lotus. As stated, this isn't the first time Lotus has had a new corporate owner; at one time it was owned 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 plenty 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 new cutting-edge vehicle architecture resulting in some rather fine vehicles . The prospect of that kind of investment in Lotus is mouth-watering.

The deal also makes plenty of sense for Geely. Yes, the stake in Proton opens up the South Asian market for it, but perhaps more important 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 experience with lightweight materials and architectures, vehicle handling and suspension optimization, efficiency, and electronics, Lotus Engineering has had an unseen hand 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 really, it's the thought of Lotus finally having the cash to develop a proper lineup that's getting us excited. After all, Lotus has had to make do with reusing the same bonded aluminum platform that first appeared in the 1996 Elise. Rather revolutionary at the time, it's still in service 21 years later under the composite body panels of the Evora, Exige, Elise, and 3-Eleven.

Wait, don’t I remember a whole load of new models?

At the turn of the decade it appeared—briefly—as if Proton was finally going to give Lotus the resources it needed to create an all-new line-up; at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, 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 allowing the team to call itself Lotus. (That team is now the Renault F1 team.)

Behar was ousted in 2014, replaced 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, finally 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 first seen in Behar's Parisian splash—including a hybrid sedan that would compete with the Porsche Panamera and Aston Martin Rapide—might return. 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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