Poor Steve....
Lotus are no different to every other manufacturer who ****ed up by believing the all electric BS. This is the fault of various governments, not car manufacturers. They have a V8 version of the Emira in development. Even if all the Chinese tat falls away they’ll be fine.
Hey Simon Saw your posts re Members Meeting and Techno Classic Essen. Was at Members Meeting a couple of weeks ago and been to Techno Classica a couple of times. Amazing scale of event, you need at least 2 days and comfortable shoes to get around to see everything. Not much Ferrari content at Members Meeting this year, but a couple of 250 SWBs running - one genuine, one replica. Lots of big shows going on in Europe now. Been to quite a few of them over the years. Auto Italia magazine Italian Car Day at Brooklands tomorrow - about 1500 Italian cars of all shapes and sizes will be there. Re McLaren and Lotus. Middle Eastern money behind McLaren cars now and Chinese behind Lotus of course. McLaren may have enough volume and F1 associated prestige to carry on in it's current direction, but I suspect that Lotus will go more to the SUV direction. The Chinese are less emotional about that sort of stuff and may just keep on a token 'sporting car'. Kelly worked for a Chinese oil company here for a while and they understood and cared little for any UK/Euro/Western concepts of employment laws and investment processes required and needed to be pulled in the right direction on a number of issues. Middle Eastern people have had more exposure and understanding of that sort of stuff - plus like the flash cars more! After all, how much of Ferrari do they own?
Ferrari also makes decent profits on all its cars; plus a strong, historic supply line and not to mention the backing of FIAT and of Italy itself.
