Philosophie & Stratégie & Avenir de Lotus

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Conférence presse Salon de Francfort, beaucoup plus intéressant qu'il n'y parait, écouter bien le passage concernant les retours sur le salon de Paris ...

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C'est bien ce que je trouve bizarre. Tu n'as pas lu le rapport annuel de Proton ?

Euuhh, non mais voila un autre article, de la même veine, tout aussi intéressant.

A priori, nous parlons bien de Dollars :

Nevertheless its quite telling, since the source of this information was a Kuala Lumpur based insider. Clearly Lotus’ Malaysian owners have become tired of the public spat with Fernandes and would like to see Lotus focus on achieving their 5-year plan – and help pay back the $270M syndicated loan borrowed in April to finance the development of Lotus’ new models and subsequent restructuring costs.

Proton have recently taken a beating on the Bursa Malaysia (previously known as Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange), plunging to a 2-year low after concerns over its latest earnings results. The national car maker posted a 94.6% year-on-year drop in net profit to RM4.55mil for its first quarter ended June 30, 2011, compared with a net profit of RM84.68mil a year earlier, which was attributed to higher expenses incurred by Lotus Group International Ltd.

Lu dans ce très intéressant article faisant part du transfert chez Caterham d'une bonne partie de l'équipe Lotus en charge du développement depuis une vingtaine des modèles Lotus dont le fameux Tony Shute, "ex-Head of Product" chez Lotus : Le père de l'Elise !!!



Une page fait plus que se tourner, c'est un pan entier de l'histoire qui s'en va, pour rappel la conception et le développement des Elise, Exige et EVORA furent placés sous sa responsabilité. Après Roger Becker, directeur technique et légende vivante Lotus, parti en retraite récemment et qui lui même reconnait en privé qu'il ne s'y reconnait plus dans le "nouveau Lotus", l'on peut dire que la métamorphose de Lotus est bien réelle. A vrai dire si l'on se rappelle le discours de Wolf le Poète fin 2010 ce départ est cohérent.

With his wispy hair and stylish Italian suit, Zimmermann could almost be heading up Dolce & Gabbana’s winter-season product assault, let alone be discussing new engine ideas and electric vehicle concepts for Lotus at a manic Paris Motor Show. But as he proved at AMG, Zimmermann strives for perfection. He wants Lotus to become “the British Maserati or Ferrari”. In a revealing statement of intent, he adds: “If you look at what we have today – the Evora, for example – this is not what we want in the future. We need emotional powertrains.”

La future gamme Caterham sera passionnante.



CQFD

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Lu sur une forum Anglais, deux nouvelles arrivées chez lotus, un directeur technique et un pilote d'essai, CV débutants s'abstenir :

The new issue of EVO has this update but interestingly they mention some new team members. In July Peter Tutzer joined the team as Technical Director. He is a chassis specialist tasked with designing the 'most elegant and lightweight' suspension design for the new family of V8's. Previously he was responsible for the underpinnings of both the Bugatti Veyron and the Pagani Zonda. Helping him from early 2012 on the Esprit project will be Loris Biococci, test driver behind the veyron, Zonda and Koenigsegg , amongst others.

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Article très intéressant confrontant les points de vue de Dany Bahar et Roger Putnam, ancien de Lotus ayant intégré la marque en 1965, proche de Colin Chapman il termina dix-sept ans plus tard comme directeur des ventes et du marketing de la marque. A le lire je ne suis pas surpris que la marque est foirée sa tentative de montée en gamme, pas très cohérent, ni convaincant comme discours notamment certaines affirmations concernant Ferrari, on voit que le mec connait beaucoup de propriétaires de Ferrari

A l'inverse celui de Bahar est lucide et bien plus réfléchi que celui superficiel délivré en conférence de presse.

Indépendamment de mon avis tout personnel, je retiens ce paragraphe :

The firm's engineering division is one reason he (D.Bahar) is confident Lotus can outshine rivals. "We have a big advantage over other small sports car manufacturers in that we have a great engineering division. No one else has the amazing brainpower of 700 engineers. That's far more than Ferrari or Aston Martin have behind them."

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Peut-être qu'ils ont les ressources pour développer plus à l'interne que d'autres constructeurs qui s'appuyent énormément sur les équipementiers (Magneti Marelli, Valeo, Bosch, Delphi et consorts). Serais cependant curieux de savoir quelle est l'allocation de ces 700 ingénieurs entre les services de consultance de Lotus Engineering et les produits de la marque.

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Je ne sais pas mais une chose est certaine, Lotus Engineering semble très prolixe. Pour s'en convaincre il suffit de consulter un ou deux numéros du "Lotus Proactive Magazine".

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Chez Lotus, il souffle la première bougie du plan de "dans cinq ans"

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Bob lutz nous parle de son rôle chez Lotus ...... un peu vaseux.

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Joli teaser ...

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Intéressant, très intéressant .... (Source ToileF1)

Genii Capital envisage une participation dans le groupe Lotus

La société luxembourgeoise d’investissements et de conseils financiers Genii Capital, créée en 2008 par Gérard Lopez et Eric Lux, et qui détient l’équipe Lotus Renault GP, envisage de prendre une participation dans le Group Lotus, le constructeur automobile fondé par Colin Chapman.

La rumeur courait depuis quelques temps dans le paddock de Formule 1. Et maintenant que Renault a refusé le projet de créer une équipe 100% française avec l’écurie d’Enstone, Lopez a mis en œuvre son plan B qui consiste en un rapprochement avec le Group Lotus, propriété de l’état malais par l’intermédiaire du constructeur automobile Proton.

Lotus Renault GP et Team Lotus devraient changer de nom l’année prochaine, pour devenir respectivement Lotus et Caterham F1 Team. Lopez a donc jugé opportun de songer à une pleine intégration entre son équipe de Formule 1 et le Group Lotus, qui a toujours une option jusqu’à fin 2012 pour racheter une partie de l’écurie.

Autosport confirme ainsi que Lopez et sa société Genii Capital sont actuellement dans des discussions avancées avec les propriétaires du Group Lotus en vue d’acquérir une participation dans le constructeur automobile, qui pourrait même être majoritaire.

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"Lotus ne vend pas assez de voiture", sans blague

Pas folichon les ventes anglaises 2011 comparées à 2010, sur les trois premiers trimestres de cette année, 272 voitures écoulées contre 358 l'année dernière.

Le board semble avoir compris que pour vendre il faut aussi un réseau, c'est bien mais pas suffisant tant qu'il s'agit de paroles. En plus il utilise un gros mot, service aprés-vente.

“We also have to work on the dealer body, the potential customers and what will be the aftersales service,”

L'arrivée de la nouvelle Elise S(Supercharged) et de l'Exige V6 S devrait booster les ventes. La nouvelle boite "séquentielle" de l'Elise devrait aussi ouvrir de nouveaux marchés, je pense à l'asie.

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Turbulences en perspective pour la fin d'année, Bahar débarqué ?

Meanwhile in Lotus Land…

October 10, 2011 by by joesaward



Formula 1 has had a confusing year with Group Lotus and Team Lotus. Group Lotus has been the sponsor (at least on paper) of the Lotus Renault GP (black Lotus, if you prefer), with cars called Renaults. Team Lotus (aka Green Lotus) has been running chassis called Lotuses. The problems are now gradually being sorted out with Group Lotus having failed to bully Team Lotus out of F1 with lawyers. As a result of that Lotus Renault GP owner Gerard Lopez seems to have concluded that the best course of action is to get control of the company that is sponsoring the team and get rid of CEO Dany Bahar, who has done a great job dreaming up completely impractical plans for the future of the car company, but has been a problem in F1 because no-one wants to help him out because of his previous adventures with Sauber, Red Bull and Ferrari. Bahar and his sidekicks have enjoyed their five minutes of fame, and have spent a lot of money making noise about Lotus challenging Porsche for customers. The automotive industry has been watching with amusement. In recent months Lopez has been quietly working to put together a consortium to buy Group Lotus from Proton. As Proton is a government company the deal must be one that suits the current administration and so the people involved appear to be government-friendly entrepreneurs such as Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar, one of the country’s richest men who has interests in transportation, logistics, plantations, property, defense and weaponry, in addition to engineering and power generation. He has regularly done deals with Zainal Hatim, another wheeler-dealer who has had a lot of government contracts over the years. I have also heard that Tan Sri Arumugam is involved in the deal. He is the chairman of Sri Inderajaya Holdings and is involved in agriculture, food, publishing, real estate, telecommunications, travel and tourism. He is also the boss of Makhota Technologies, which deals in electrical and mechanical engineering and has a well-connected customer base. It is not clear who else is involved but there is no doubt that the group is getting together to do the government a favour and take Lotus off its books.

It remains to be seen when an announcement will be made but there is a lot of talk in Malaysia at the moment of an impending election, which could be called at any time by Prime Minister Najib Razak. He recently issued a budget aimed at winning votes with sensible handling of the economy and it is not clear when any Group Lotus deal might be announced. Certainly the Proton accounts in the course of the last year have not been very good, with revenues and profits down. Group Lotus has been the reason for much of the expenditure and so offloading the firm before an election will look good. The sale is not believed to involve any money, but Group Lotus has debts of something like $150 million which must be guaranteed by the consortium.

Tony Fernandes of Team Lotus had been hoping to get such a deal, but since he acquired the Caterham car company his focus seems to have shifted and he is hard at work on setting up his own automobile business around the Caterham name. It remains to be seen whether the two companies will be competing for the same customers. We hear that Team Lotus is now negotiating to buy the old Leafield Technical Centre, formerly the home to the Arrows and Super Aguri F1 teams and the TWR automotive consulting business. This is currently owned by US home improvement magnate John Menard. The facility is big enough to house an entire F1 team and probably a fair amount of Caterham activity as well. There is space to expand and few problems with planning permission as the site has two large radio masts and was formerly a government radio station. It was eventually handed over the British Telecom which sold the site to TWR in 1993. The team is also tipped to be talking to Silverstone but Leafield would be a quicker fix. The team will maintain some of its production departments in Norfolk, although in the end the facility there may end up being used for junior teams and so on.

If all goes to plan the name changes will go through at the start of December. All the teams apart from HRT appear to have agreed to let this happen, in part because some of them want to change their names as well. The only real question is whether the name changing get dragged into the F1 political situation. If not Lotus Renault GP will run cars called Lotuses and Team Lotus will become Team Caterham Air Asia and will field Caterham F1 cars. One can imagine that the Marussia car company might like to have F1 cars called Marussias rather than Virgins, while the HRT team is not much use to the new owners and there are question marks over the future ownership of Force India and Scuderia Toro Rosso. Although everyone is denying that the teams are being sold one can imagine that new owners might want their cars called something different…

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Proton réagit aux rumeurs de vente de Lotus et dément l'information. Avec les héritiers de Chapman, on ne s'ennuie pas, il y a des rebondissements tous les jours

ICI, le communiqué officiel de Proton.

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La gamme complète ...