The new Lotus Esprit
Lotus reveals plans to build the Esprit, Eterne, Elite and Elan with a £500 million investment which will create 1900 new jobs.
Dany Bahar – Lotus boss – revealed plans at last year’s Paris Motor Show to turn Lotus in to an East Anglian Aston Martin.
Those plans included one car we knew about – the new Lotus Esprit – and a number we didn’t – the Lotus Eterne, Lotus Elite, Lotus Elan and a new Lotus Elite.
But the plans seemed to be nothing more than a wish list, and although it was intimated that Lotus owners Proton were going to provide a war chest of £770 million to fund the development, that later appeared to be an intent to provide Lotus with funds to develop a new range of cars, rather than an actual commitment.
In fact the only new Lotus under development was the new Lotus Esprit, with the rest of the wish-list seemingly no more than a pipe dream. But something has changed.
We’re hearing this morning that Lotus has acquired funding of just over £500 million to get their transformation under way and have even secured a bit of Government funding (thought to be around £10 million) to help.
It seems the plan is to expand the Lotus facility at Hethel in Norfolk to build the new Lotus range, with the new investment creating 1100 new jobs at Hethel and a further 800 in the supply chain for the new expander Lotus range.
We’re digging round for more details.
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