A revolutionary Lotus five-door crossover is being developed at top speed at the company’s Hethel design studios.
It is described by CEO Jean-Marc Gales as “a real Lotus” and “the world’s first lightweight SUV” and will be made in an all-new Lotus factory in south-east China.
The new car is tipped for production in 2019 and is very likely to become the best-selling model in Lotus’s 67-year history.
However, Gales is clear that Hethel will remain Lotus’s management and design hub and continue as the manufacturing centre for its three-tier sports car range. Sales of improved Elise, Exige and Evora models expanded by 55% to just over 2000 last year and are tipped to beat 3000 this year.
The crossover is the first fruit of a three-way joint venture between Lotus, its Malaysian owner Proton and Goldstar Heavy Industrial, a Chinese engineering and trading company.
The aim is to take advantage of exploding SUV demand in China, especially in the C-segment, where sales recently topped three million. Porsche’s Porsche Macan is selling at a rate of around 30,000 units a year in China and is tipped to reach 50,000 in a couple of years.
The launch of the new Lotus SUV represents the third phase of Gales’s ambitious but believable development plan revealed about a year ago.
The first phase, nearly achieved, was to take sales beyond 2000 units in the first year and get trading into the black. The second is to press towards 4000 sports car sales, with further improved versions of the current models coming fairly soon. The third, planned for the end of the decade when the SUV and all-new versions of the sports cars hit the market, is to beat 10,000 units. Encouraged by early progress, Gales is already dreaming of a stage four.
The new crossover will bow to Lotus tradition by having a name beginning with ‘E’. It will aslo offer 4x4 capability, at least as an option, like most of its class rivals.However, it will differ from the rest by being both lighter and faster, says Gales, with more emphasis than any rival on fine steering and handling.
After satisfying initial demand in China, Lotus will consider launching the model in Europe and Japan, where design and safety legislation is relatively similar to China’s.
US sales would be a more difficult proposition, Gales says, because of the modifications needed. He acknowledges that demand for the SUV could eventually drive total Lotus sales beyond 10,000 but is anxious “not to run before we can walk”.
DESIGN
As our sketches show, the new crossover uses familiar design cues in a new way, with a new grille treatment that alludes lightly to famous Lotus models of the past and clearly suggests light weight and high performance.
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Lotus Eventual............................
These claims of biggest, smallest, fastest, lightest are usually the 96% daftest and 100% inaccurate.
Daihatsu, Suzuki and Mazda etc were making lightweight SUV's 25 years ago, except that they didn't call them SUV's they called them useful small 4x4 vehicles for farmers, landowners and hobbyists.
Well, I for one am looking
Costs have been cut, more staff employed, and everything that JMG has promised has become reality unlike the previous BooHoo idiot.
It seems like these forums are just for doom mongers, because as soon as any British news comes out, the old misery guts pillocks come out and pick pick pick, why can you not see that the company has been transformed, and is doing so much better, and applaud the hard work that has been completed so far, and look forward to what will happen in the future.
but then we are talking Autocar Forums, and that will NEVER happen, too many old miseries in here.
LG