SMMT New Car Registrations The Final NaiI For Lotus?

How is Lotus like Kung-Fu Panda? You're about to find out...

18 May 2015

In amongst all the UK 2012 car sales results this week (below), there’s a slow death occurring. Forget the VW Group running away with the game, and almost everyone choosing the least thirsty models. Lotus is in serious trouble.

"Yeah we know", you might say. "Lotus always is." True, even the name has been taken to stand for Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious. But the numbers don’t lie, and Lotus only registered 137 cars in 2012 - including press demonstrators and dealer cars. Lotus has a UK market share of just 0.01 per cent and one registration every two and a half days. Porsche sold a car almost once an hour. Car makers can’t absorb a 60 per cent fall in demand and stay afloat. It’s time to break out your sacred beads and prayer mat. Or a lottery ticket, and buy the whole shebang for yourself.

We’d love to say the future’s bright, but it sort of isn’t. Next in the Lotus pipeline is the Exige S Roadster. Brand-lovers don’t er, love it, because it’s a leatherier, more GT-biased open-top version of the hardcore Exige sports car. And will GT/sports car buyers really go for one versus a Boxster, Cayman or F-type? Haha, good one LOL.

So, Lotus is left treading water with the extremely hardcore Exige, ageing and pricey Elise, and the great-to-drive but nasty-to-use-like-anything-but-a-Sunday-thrash-toy Evora. And sorry, learner, the city car isn’t happening, and neither will an SUV, like Porsche’s cash cow Cayenne. These are the harsh truths.

If you’re amazed Lotus has lasted this long with a range weaker than Jedward’s, you’re not alone. The secret behind it is all the set-up work Lotus does to sort out everyone else’s cars. An Elise or Evora might not work every day, but when they do work they’re the finest handling cars on the planet. Everyone knows that, from you and me to the world’s biggest car maker suits. Everything from small family hatches to massive luxury SUVs get sent to Lotus boot camp where they’re taught to ride and handle properly by Lotus’s genius gurus, like a sort of chassis Kill Bill/Kung-Fu Panda mentor. And it’s these big gigs that bring the big bucks, and keep Lotus, and its band of loyal workers, just about afloat.

Still, let’s conjure up some reasons to be cheerful. British ingenuity has a habit of surviving, and the new Esprit is supposedly still being developed, with a set of abilities to give a 458 Italia and MP4-12C a kick in the head. And with ice-cool Kimi steering the F1 team to glory in 2013, some much needed good headlines on the world stage could be around the corner.