INTERVIEW
LOTUS BOSS TALKS ELECTRIC SPORTS CARS, DEALER CHANGES AND HOPES FOR FUTURE
Lotus Evija
Lotus Emira
The man at the top of the British sports car manufacturer sat down with Ted Welford at the Concours of Elegance to discuss the brand.
F
rom glittering sports cars in James Bond films to financial disasters, then to upcoming model portfolios wowing motor show audiences before being entirely canned just a few years later, it’s safe to say few car firms have had more ups and downs than Lotus. That was before it was taken over by Geely in 2017 – the Chinese automotive giant that’s turned Volvo around and is now set to do the same for this British sports car firm. Well, we say ‘British sports car firm’ loosely, as from next year there’ll be a Lotus SUV rolling out of a new factory in Wuhan. That’s how much the marque is changing with this fresh cash. ‘I’m not sure Lotus would have survived the past 18 months without Geely. I just don’t see how we could have continued without that backing,’ is the stark admission by Matt Windle, managing director of Lotus, who sat down with Car Dealer at the recent Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court Palace to discuss the brand. Windle knows Lotus better than most – joining the firm in 1998 before heading up work on the Tesla Roadster (a model created by the brand’s in-house engineering division, based on the Elise) between 2005 and 2012. After short bursts at Caterham and the now-defunct Zenos, Windle rejoined Lotus at the start of 2017 as chief body engineer. Since then, he’s climbed the Lotus ladder, becoming managing director earlier in 2021. Just a few months after taking the top role, there was the unveiling of the new Emira sports car, which has already received more than 5,000 orders and left Lotus scrambling to find more production capacity to avoid lengthy waits. Windle says the Emira is generally appealing to non-Lotus customers, mainly Porsche and Jaguar buyers, and will notably be the last petrol-powered car the firm makes as it switches to EVs – unsurprisingly something that’s proved controversial. As has the decision to make SUVs. ‘I understand that people won’t like what we’re doing,’ Windle says. ‘But ultimately, the aim of this is to build enough cars so that we can invest in new products so we can have a new sports car on the road every five years. That’s what we’re trying to do. But whatever the car is, it will be designed around the driver – that kind of DNA from our sports car will go up into other vehicles.’ These sports cars will also continue to roll off the brand’s long-running facility in Hethel, which has had more than £100m thrown at it this year alone to get it ready for the Emira and Evija – the latter being Lotus’s crazy 2,000bhp electric hypercar that acts as the halo model. 06 | CarDealerMag.co.uk
The whole business needs to change, from design to engineering, to how we deal with customers, to dealers, through to parts supply and aftersales. Matt Windle, managing director of Lotus
