Jean-Marc Gales is the man tasked with cleaning up the mess at Lotus left behind after Dany Bahar’s failed plan to launch five new models and acrimonious departure in 2012. As we discovered, there is a firm derivative-based plan in place for the next two to three years and more ambitious products – such as an lightweight SUV and saloon – in the pipeline for 2017 and beyond. You helped to introduce the DS brand when you worked for Peugeot Citroen – is a similar radical overhaul needed at Lotus? It’s different because we already have an iconic brand. There are few brands that have this history, founded by Colin Chapman, and you can attach many clear values to it. I want to return to those values because I think we lost them a bit on the way. ‘Light is right’, ‘agility’, ‘pure driving’ this is basically the Lotus DNA. We want to build on this very stable foundation and the future cars you see will be consistent with that strategy. You are going to see many things in the next two years that go in that direction.
Can you confirm then that for the next two years your product plan is based on derivatives of the Elise, Exige and Evora? Absolutely. They have a lot of life left, these cars – nobody has found a better way to combine light weight, ride and handling. With derivatives there are many things we can think of, and I wouldn’t exclude anything right now because the Lotus principles apply to every segment. We think about performance enhancements of course, ride and handling enhancements and we will take further weight out of the cars without compromise – we want future Lotuses to be easier to live with and easier to get in and out.
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