1978 Lotus Esprit Resto-mod!!! on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Lotus drops Renault for Mercedes F1 engines

With only three manufacturers supplying engines in Formula One this season, the teams have been fairly evenly split: Ferrari, Sauber and Marussia use Ferrari engines; Mercedes, McLaren, Williams and Force India run on Mercedes power; Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Lotus and Caterham employ Renault power units. But one important team is reportedly preparing to ditch Renault and switch to Mercedes for next year.
That team is Lotus, an outfit which has fallen off its pace the past few seasons but which has still been a vital partner for Renault. That's because until a few seasons ago, the team based in Enstone, UK, was owned by Renault and bore the company's name. The operation was founded in 1981 as Toleman, was rechristened Benetton in 1986, bought by Renault 2000, taking the company's name in 2002, sold to its current owners Genii Capital 2009 and adopting the black and gold Lotus livery in 2011. As Benetton, it ran Ford engines until switching to Renault in 1995, sticking with the French outfit ever since, but that decades-long partnership - which meandered through Renault ownership and back out again - is now apparently drawing to a close.
The departure of Lotus as a customer team ought to allow Renault to focus instead on its increasing ties with Red Bull, which has taken the Enstone team's place as Renault's principal team. It could prove a smart move for the Lotus team as well, as the Mercedes engines have been outperforming the Renault units this season by an order of magnitude: not only is Mercedes far outpacing Red Bull at the top of the standings, but each of Mercedes' customer teams is performing better than Renault's clients.

Lotus admits its fancy London shop is a waste of money

Piccadilly in London is one of the most expensive shopping streets in the world. And right by where they filmed that awesome scene from American Werewolf in London, Lotus has a showroom. I wandered in last week. Handmade suit, posh watch, smart shoes. But the lack of interest from the sales staff made me think I was wearing a Kimi "Leave me alone I know what I'm doing" T-shirt. To the cognoscenti it's a bit confused. There is no separation between the Lotus F1 team and Lotus cars. Even though a friend at Lotus F1 once told me that the team has a closer relationship with Microsoft than it does with Lotus Cars. What makes this especially strange is that the F1 stuff is front and centre: overpriced caps, T-shirts, and team gear, with the cars playing second fiddle. Yet this is a store paid for by Cars. You have to wonder what the shop is going to sell next year when the Enstone F1 team drops the Lotus name to become Renault. But that is nothing to the wondering you start to do when you speak to the staff. On a previous visit I'd asked about the relationship between Lotus F1 and Lotus Cars, and the sales staff insisted that they were one and the same. A short time after that I spoke to Lotus CEO Jean-Marc Gales at an event where he'd been the guest speaker. He told me that moves were underway to fix the problem and that they would soon have staff in the shop that knew about the cars. So last week's return visit was depressing. In the back there is an Exige and an Elise. I asked the difference and the girl suggested that we look it up on the internet. She took a business card, I made my excuses and left. Daft really I might not have bought a car but I was seriously tempted by the GBP20 carbon fibre pen. My local dealer, Hexagon, called and mailed, but what was really telling, and bloody impressive, was the call from Hethel. I vented my disappointment with the Piccadilly store, and the Lotus man explained. And impressed. Normally you'd get some dreadful company line about how the shop wasn't for people like me, that it was all deliberate to avoid scaring people off and welcome new blood to the brand. But instead he was honest. He told me that the shop was a folly. That it was one of Dany Bahar's many expensive ideas. He signed a ten-year lease on the shop at a million pounds a year and they can't afford to run it. They did train up some good people but, as you can't pay people rural Norfolk salaries and expect them to work in Piccadilly, they left.

Lotus planning new 400-hp 2-Eleven successor [UPDATE]

UPDATE: A previous version of this post suggested the Evora's new 400-horsepower V6 might find its way into the Elise, but sources indicate that it wouldn't fit. The text below has been updated accordingly. It's been nine months since Jean-Marc Gales took over as the new head of Lotus, and as Top Gear recently discovered, the former Peugeot chief is cleaning house. Gales doesn't put himself in the camp of past Lotus execs (Dany Bahar chief among them) who've reasoned that the company can only succeed if it introduces new and more upscale products. Instead he's focusing on the brand's existing models – namely the Elise, Exige and Evora – but don't think that means they'll just be skating by. On his watch, Lotus recently introduced the Elise S Cup (apparently the first model it ever introduced on schedule) and the new Evora 400 (ahead of schedule), and there are plans for more. Though Gales apparently has no intention of producing an engine in-house, the Toyota-based 3.5-liter supercharged V6 – now producing 400 horsepower and 302 pound-feet of torque – is slated to be slotted into the Exige as well. Perhaps most exciting, though, is the prospect of a successor for the 2-Eleven. That windowless speedster was the most extreme interpretation of the Exige, packing just 252 hp but weighing less than 1,500 pounds. The next version would weigh considerably more – closer to 2,000 pounds – but pack that new 400-hp engine to drive the power-to-weight ratio through the roof (if it even has one) in pursuit of a Nurburgring lap record. Don't expect it to switch to carbon fiber construction, though: Like his colleagues at Ferrari, Gales is convinced that aluminum is the way to go, offering comparable weight-saving benefits but at a fraction the cost. To ensure that these new products don't disappear in a cloud of tire smoke and irrelevance, Gales is also overhauling the way Lotus markets its cars. For one thing, he's opening new showrooms in key markets like Paris, Berlin, Monte Carlo and Abu Dhabi. For another, he's making sure Lotus actually keeps a database of its customers, something which it almost unbelievably didn't bother with until now. Those might not be the most exciting aspects of the business, but if that's all it will take to keep Lotus in the game, we're all for it. Featured Gallery Lotus 2-Eleven track car View 18 Photos News Source: Top GearImage Credit: Lotus Lotus lotus 2-eleven