LOS ANGELES — One of the highlights of the Los Angeles Auto Show, which opens this week, will be the display for Lotus Cars. Show-goers will be witnessing either the iconic British sports carmaker’s splashy reinvention and rebirth, or its spectacular demise.
In recent years, the Lotus stand would have featured two or three cars: the Elise, Exige and Evora. This year, they will be joined by five new concepts for new models the brand hopes to bring out over the next five years. If Lotus is successful, the company’s annual worldwide sales volume would perk up from the current 1,100 or so to more than 8,000 yearly.
“We took a look about a year ago at where we were as a company,” said Dany Bahar, the chief executive of Lotus Cars. “And we realized we could not survive, making only 1,100 cars a year. We either had to become a much bigger car company or die.”
“It’s a gamble,” said Robert A. Lutz, the retired General Motors co-chairman, who has recently joined the Lotus Advisory Council, along with Tom Purves, formerly of BMW; a Magna executive, Burkhard Goeschel; and Frank Tuch of the Volkswagen Group.
“If Lotus does nothing, it’s certain death,” Mr. Lutz continued. “If they make a massive investment, like they have proposed, maybe they have a chance. When faced with choice between certain death, or probable death, you always try to pick the probable over the inevitable. I learned that in military aviation.”
Mr. Lutz, born in the same Swiss village as Mr. Bahar, said he believed the Lotus chief had the right stuff to succeed. Mr. Bahar formerly ran Ferrari’s marketing department before being named in 2009 to lead Lotus.
“The Swiss have the ability to do things that are a departure from the past,“ Mr. Bahar said.
Mr. Lutz noted, “They’ve got all the right guys in the right places: the Swiss, to run things with precision; the Italians, to design the car; the Germans to engineer them; and the British to construct them. That’s as it should be, in a perfect automotive universe.”
The Lotus management team appeared at a preview event last weekend at a swank private home, high in the Hollywood Hills above Bel Air. The tony gathering included the media, celebrities and potential customers and dealers.
Lotus is in the market for dealers -– after recently sending out termination notices to every one of its dealers worldwide.
“We will build a new dealer network, new parts and service outlets, and train new people to work on them and sell them,” Mr. Bahar said confidently.
What about the people who have typically bought Lotus cars? The niche audience of sports car enthusiasts who covet the lightweight, quick and minimalist sports machines is still welcome.
“We will always make such cars as the Evora for them,” Mr. Bahar said. “But we will seek out a new customer for our new models — the Esprit, the Elan, the Elise, the Elite and the Eterne.” The Esprit will be the first to debut, a little more than a year from now.
“If they get that one right, the rest will follow that much more easily,” Mr. Lutz said.
But where will all Lotus’s new customers come from?
“Porsche,” Mr. Bahar answered without hesitation. “We want the Porsche customer. We bring things to that market segment that Porsche does not offer, such as passion, emotionality and individuality. We will be the British Porsche, the one that doesn’t have everything the German Porsche has” — such as Porsche’s iconic design baggage. He said he believed that Porsche owners were restless that “there are too many Porsches on the road now” and they all look basically the same.
The Lotus ambitions are being fueled by funding from its parent company, Proton, in Malaysia. “It’s 770 million pounds sterling,” Mr. Bahar said, which is close to $1.2 billion. “That might not be much for a large car company, but for a small one such as we are, we can do many things with that amount of money.”
Lotus also plans an ambitious program of racing activities, including IndyCar, Le Mans, and a possible return to Formula One.
Mr. Lutz said he was given permission to participate in the Lotus venture by the General Motors board, so he could continue to draw his pension from them. “Because of the small volumes Lotus sells in currently, G.M. didn’t see them as a competitor,” Mr. Lutz said. “But if they start selling some of these new sports cars in volumes greater than the Corvette — well, they may want to revisit their decision.”
