The Carchat

Click on the photo to read Autocar's story about Proton's announcement on the future of Lotus. Gone is Colin Chapman's philosophy of lightness and simplicity, and in comes aspirations of selling fancy, upmarket, luxury £100,000 cars. There are even plans to introduce a city car - Aston Martin's Cygnet is surely crass enough, but at least it's based on the fairly marvellous Toyota iQ. A Proton Lotus city car? Don't make me retch.

I posted some thoughts many months ago about the Elise facelift - positing my opinion that Lotus seems to think it's Ferrari - all but confirmed by the latest announcements. And of course, Michael posted this story last month about Lotus' ideas for lightweight cars in the future. Clearly a pamphlet of lies.

Thing is, we already have a Ferrari. From Italy. A Ferrari from Malaysia is going to take a while to become quite as glamorous and exciting, why not stick with 50 years of heritage from being Lotus of Norfolk? The problem for Lotus has been a lack of investment for years, not of engineering nous and a great philosophy. So many cool concepts and ideas have not come to fruition - where's the new Esprit, a sportier grand tourer to rival the Rapide?

With not even the merest hint of melodrama, it's a sad day, methinks.

I know that things have been up in the air at Lotus of late - lots of people coming and going, and as Steve Sutcliffe mentioned in his Autocar column this week, the chief exec of Lotus since last July has been Ferrari's former marketing head, Dany Bahar, and they've poached among other people, former design chief Donato Coco.

They've started an F1 team - although whether that's more closely aligned to Lotus or Proton is up for discussion - and they've got a raft of new models coming over the next couple of years. The F1 programme is ambitious and the new models clearly intended to expand the size of the company - are they trying to position themselves as a British Ferrari?

Certainly judging from this facelifted Elise that was announced today they seem to be moving towards a Ferrari design route. This looks like a perfect entry-level roadster for the Italian company if they were ever so inclined - but is it Lotus? Less so, I think.

And a favourite quote of mine: "If one of my cars crosses the finish line and nothing has broken, the car was built too heavy.”

As disturbing as this image is, it's great to see someone taking F1 less seriously for a change.

From the Lotus site:

"'Bring it on, the sexier the better.' That was the response from Tony Fernandes to Sir Richard Branson's challenge over the loser in the Formula 1 stakes having to dress up as an airline stewardess on the winner's airline"

Fantastic. Now if only they'd bring in-season testing back...

Thank Jalopnik's former @TheAutoInsider for this one. A beast of a Lotus Exige, tuned for orgasm.