Lotus Curtails Ambitious Plan

When then-CEO Danny Bahar related his plan for Lotus' next five years, it was hard not to let at least some degree of critical disbelief sink in. Hoping to take the brand from the hard-core purist sports car manufacturers they are to a legitimate supercar competitor (optimistically citing Ferrari as their target), Bahar's was nothing short of an incredible claim.

So perhaps it's less than surprising that one of the things killed off shortly after Bahar's removal was his overly ambitious plan. Reworking the business model to include just three new model lines (Bahar had been hoping for five), as well as substantially reducing the number of outside consultants in favour of using in-house talent, the new plan represents a huge savings for Lotus' new owners, DRB-Hicom. Having already pumped $242 million US into Lotus' development this year and stipulating that it may need to inject a further $121 million by 2013, DRB-Hicom's new plan should help the Lotus' latest products see the light of day sooner while mitigating any undue financial risk for the embattled brand.