Lotus For Under $30k??? on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Lotus stepping up to LMP1 in World Endurance Championship

Only a couple of years ago, it looked like the top tier of prototype endurance racing was in trouble. Peugeot shut down its program, leaving the LMP1 category all to Audi to dominate. Only six cars entered the Petit Le Mans in 2012, and the season was cut short. But the top class in the FIA World Endurance Championship has since blossomed. And it only looks poised to grow further.
Audi and Toyota will each be back on the grid this season, joined by Porsche. But the latest news has Lotus stepping up to the big leagues also. (Well, sorta: the German-run squad uses the Lotus name and colors, but has no more to do with the automaker than the Formula One team of the same name.)
The Lotus LMP1 will be based on the same Lola-based T129 chassis used until now in the LMP2 class, with former F1 driver Christijan Albers leading the driver lineup. In addition to Audi, Toyota and Porsche, the solitary Lotus entry will also compete against privateer Rebellion Racing in a nine-car LMP1 grid throughout the season.

Genii capitalizing on Lotus F1 tech with new sports car?

Detractors will tell you that there's little to be applied from Formula One racing to the cars we drive, but what about the cars most of us could only dream of driving? We're talking about supercars from the likes of Ferrari and McLaren - two hugely successful F1 racing teams that have successfully made the transition into building exotic sports cars for the road. And soon there may be one more.
That would be the Lotus F1 Team, which is rumored to be working on a sports car project of its own. Now we know what you might be thinking: Lotus already makes sports cars. Indeed they do, only the F1 team has nothing more to do with the automaker behind the Exige and Evora than the name they share. Today the team (formerly known as Toleman, Benetton and Renault) is owned by Genii Capital, whose chairman Gerald Lopez recently confirmed the rumors to Auto Motor und Sport: "We are going to develop a carbon chassis for a sports car that can be built in large quantities.... But this has nothing to do with Formula 1."
With little to nothing in the way of details available, the circulating rumors had tied the venture to on-again, off-again Italian auto marque De Tomaso. But our source at ATS (which recently bought the rights to the De Tomaso name following Gian Mario Rossignolo's aborted attempt to revive it) firmly denied the prospect of any such collaboration. Spokesmen for the Lotus F1 Team would not divulge any information; neither would the press office for parent company Genii Capital, leaving the door wide open to speculation once again.

New Lotus owners ditch ambitious five-year plan

This didn't take long. The new overlords at Lotus have reportedly scrapped the company's five-year plan. DRB-Hicom ditched the turnaround strategy, penned by ousted CEO Danny Bahar, because it believes the market viewed the plan as overly ambitious.
The new product plan will slim the number of new model lines from five to three, and Lotus will likely slash the number planned consultants in favor of relying more heavily on in-house talent. According to The Star, the move should help expedite product development and save cash at the same time.
Even so, nothing is written in stone as of yet. DRB-Hicom says the new plan will take up to a year to finalize. The company has dumped around $242 million into Lotus so far this year, and the struggling automaker may require another $121 million by 2013. Lotus all but stopped production earlier this year during a loan freeze, but the lights came back on in April. The company now produces around 44 vehicles per week.