These cars are crucial to Lotus’ Vision 80 strategy, named after the brand’s 80th anniversary, which will take place in 2028. globally, with products that are innovative, take us to new markets and new segments, and generally grow the brand around the world,” said Mr. Windle.
A critical year for electric vehicles
While the general car market is stagnating, the popularity of battery-powered cars is rising worldwide.
Lotus aims to sell 100,000 vehicles annually worldwide by 2028. This is a high target. In 2021, the brand sold just 1,701. Another esteemed and long-lived sports car manufacturer, Maserati, has had similar sales targets for the past decade, with major investments and expanded products. Last year, Maserati delivered just over 24,000 cars.
Moreover, it is not the first time that Lotus promises a major expansion. In 2010, the brand led by Dany Bahar, a former Ferrari executive, unveiled five new cars and promised that they would be in production in five years. Allegations of financial impropriety by Mr Bahar and dueling lawsuits followed. None of these cars came into existence.
Mr. Windle distinguishes the current situation of the brand from that. “I think at the time they were trying to sell a plan to get investment,” he said. “In this era we have the investment, we have the plan, and then we’ll talk about it later.” He added that Lotus had “a 10-year strategy that is fully invested.”
This heavy commitment is unknown to the brand. “Lotus has always been in bankruptcy,” said Ross Robbins, a 78-year-old retired businessman, brand historian and author, and a member of Lotus Limited, one of the oldest and largest of the American brand affinity groups. “Even when Chapman was there in the early days, they never ran out of capital and bounced from disaster to disaster.”
Yet this resource poverty catalyzed some of the shoddy company’s performance. “They’ve always bootstrapped things,” producing cars that were advanced and innovative and that stood out above their weight, said Mr. Robbins. “But they’re fragile, and not for someone who wasn’t very well versed in mechanical things, because they need a lot of attention.”
Loving something that consistently fails is a perverse compulsion common to many owners of temperamental cars. It follows that Lotus maintains a highly committed owner group.
