New Lotus Esprit cancelled? Not according to Lotus

The Interwebs are rife with rumours that the new Lotus Esprit has been cancelled. But Lotus say it’s not and the claims are made up.

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This year has not been an easy one for Lotus Cars.

Dany Bahar was finally ousted from Lotus after the new owners of Lotus managed to remove the flamboyant former Ferrari man from his role at Lotus and ditch his fantasy plans to turn Lotus in to a cross between Aston Martin and Ferrari.

But even though Bahar has gone – along with his new multi supercar plans for a new Esprit, Eterne, Elite and Elan – it seemed likely that Lotus would still move forward with plans to make a new Esprit, especially as the Esprit was already in the planning before Bahar arrived and wasn’t really a part of his ‘new’ Lotus supercar range.

But this week the net has been filled with claims that Lotus are about to dump plans for a new Esprit as new owners DRB Hicom seek a way forward for Lotus after huge losses under Proton ownership and the awful PR shambles Bahar’s supercar plans were for Lotus (never mind the rambling Lotus PR disaster earlier this year on Facebook).

But Lotus are adamant that claims of the Esprit’s demise are a fiction and have stated that they are nothing but rumour and speculation and have been grabbed out of thin air. Which, to be fair to those who’ve reported the new Esprit’s demise, is what you might expect them to say.

But as far as we can see, DRB Hicom are locked in to Lotus for at least two years and it makes sense to make the most of the cars they have and to push forward with a new Esprit on which a lot of real work has already been done. If nothing else, it should make Lotus more saleable if that’s the route DRB Hicom take in 2014.

So, just for a change, we tend to believe the assertion from Lotus that the new Esprit has not been cancelled.