1995 Lotus Esprit S4s Coupe 2-door 2.2l on 2040-cars

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Lotus bows out of Paris Motor Show

The plan put forth by former Lotus CEO Dany Bahar was to explode the British brand into the high-dollar sports car segment and directly challenge its marquee names. The first explosion came with the surprise introduction of five concepts at the 2010 Paris Motor Show. What has continued to surprise, though, is that the explosions haven't stopped: parent company Proton has had troubles leading to a reworking of its Formula One involvement, its IndyCar effort has had a rough ride, Proton's sale to Malaysian conglomerate DRB Hicom led to a production stoppage, and while the company was reassured that it wouldn't be sold, Bahar was shown the door - along with four of those Paris concepts, as far as we can tell. Yet the company is still making highly regarded cars and going racing.
So it shouldn't be all that surprising that, according to a report in Car and Driver, Lotus won't be attending this year's Paris Motor Show at all. Lotus didn't have much to show off at the Geneva Motor Show or the New York Show as all development was halted for two months, and the new corporate owner and new CEO installed by that owner are still working through the details of its niche English property. We will hope this is nothing more than a step in the reorganization, and look forward to seeing the Hethel firm again in Los Angeles or Detroit.

Race Recap: 2013 Indian Grand Prix mostly calm with chances of Championships

The smog around the Buddh International Circuit got so bad over the weekend that the FIA had to change the practice sessions. Then the soft tires that Pirelli brought to be the options were found to degrade so quickly that teams had to change their qualifying and race strategies. The only man it didn't seem to affect was - guess who? - Sebastian Vettel, who put his Infiniti Red Bull Racing on pole position.
Behind him came Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes-AMG Petronas, Mark Webber in the second Infiniti Red Bull and on medium tires, Felipe Massa in the first Ferrari, Kimi Räikkönen in the first Lotus, Nico Hülkenberg in the first Sauber, Fernando Alonso in the second Ferrari, and the McLaren duo of Sergio Perez and Jenson Button. The tire strategizing didn't work out for Romain Grosjean in the second Lotus, who didn't get out of Q1 after only running the medium compound tire and lined up 17th.
The Indian Grand Prix has been held twice and Vettel has led every single lap of both races. If nothing else, we knew there would be at least one new thing about this Indian Grand Prix: there'd be a lap not led by Vettel since he qualified on softs and would have to pit before Webber and Alonso who were both on mediums.

Coca-Cola returning to F1 with Lotus sponsorship [w/videos]

Even before Red Bull Racing became a record-breaking three-time Constructor's Champion in Formula One, it has dominated conversations both as a team and as an energy drink. After seven years of "Red Bull this" and "Red Bull that," Coca-Cola is reportedly ready to jump into the F1 fray with its Sweden-based energy drink Burn.
Rumors had placed Coca-Cola's entry with McLaren F1, but it's actually Lotus that has secured the deal. We have no idea what the sponsorship will look like, but the website for Burn says that "We [intend] to foster that creativity by incorporating art and music in a way that will break the conventions of traditional F1 sponsorship," Lotus F1 team principal Eric Boullier adding "We are excited to partner with burn to build a new and innovative model for sponsorships that will combine experiences, content creation and social media..."
Since most - including this writer - have no idea what Burn is, we've included a couple of Burn commercial spots to help get us up to speed, which you'll find below. The 2012 season hasn't even ended, and we're already looking forward to 2013...