Dany Bahar who had great marketing success with Red Bull and Ferrari has been given the job of turning around the ailing Norfolk car manufacturer, in spite of the fact that he has no real experience in manufacturing. However, selling is selling and Bahar tripled the merchandise sales at Ferrari and did a fantastic job for Red Bull.

The Malaysian owners of Lotus, Proton have put their faith in Bahar and have agreed to commit £500 million of new investment into Lotus; this was one of Bahar's conditions.

Last year Norwich based Lotus sold just 2,610 cars; not enough to keep the wolf from the door. What Bahar says is that Lotus needs more expensive cars with bigger margins. This is why Proton ’s money is on Bahar. What is clearly needed is a bit of common sense and a feel for what people want, not someone with manufacturing experience.

Lotus needs to go back to making cars like the wonderful Lotus Esprit, which had class and style; enough style to be used as James Bond’s car. Can you imaging them doing that with the Lotus Elise, he wouldn’t have been able to get into it.

If you look at the Elise pictured above, it looks fantastic but as you get closer you realise it’s the size of a Matchbox Car. Why did they have to make it so small? We could not count the number of times that clients leasing a Porsche Boxster said to us, “I would have had a Lotus Elise if it were not so small”.

Just imagine the Elise, exactly as it is but longer and wider, what a fantastic car it would be. But no, Lotus continued for fifteen years producing a car that only a small following of enthusiasts wanted. 

The Evora compares favourably in size with the Boxster and what we expect to see in the future is some much larger luxury sports cars coming out of Lotus and over the coming years Lotus, with Bahar at the helm, will be a force to be reckoned with.