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Lotus suing former CEO Bahar over spending on homes, helicopters and watches

More details have come out about the legal suit and countersuit being contested between Lotus cars owner DRB-Hicom and former CEO of Lotus Dany Bahar. Bahar was brought in by Malaysian car company Proton in 2009 to turn Lotus around, and events during his tenure have made just about everyone wonder "What's going on?" That's not unusual - it can take a minute to figure things out when a new leader takes everything in a new direction - but in this case the clouds didn't clear quickly enough.
When the Malaysian government sold Proton to Malaysian auto supplier DRB-Hicom earlier this year, a forensic accounting team from Ernst & Young and The Rothschild Group started going over the books. Not long after, Bahar was suspended in June from his position and then fired. In his countersuit against DRB-Hicom, claims of lavish spending began to surface. Then the stories and leaks and rumors really began, the UK's Financial Mail reporting on more than one million pounds spent on private flights and home renovations, the New Zealand Herald talking about other executives sacked so that DRB could rearrange a 270-million-pound bank loan to Lotus, and rumors on forums about Bahar flying from his home in Norfolk to Hethel HQ and spending 30,000 pounds on motorsports books for his office.
In the latest Bloomberg report it is said that DRB-Hicom seeks 2.5 million pounds ($4 million US) from Bahar "for unauthorized expenses and overpaid salary and bonuses," including the purported expense of 3,000 pounds on watches for company managers. DRB-Hicom also says Bahar made damaging statements to the media, on top of breaching his contractual duties. Bahar's countersuit seeks $10.6 million from DRB-Hicom.

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.

Xcar tosses the Lotus Evora 400 around in the rain

Lotus appears to be blooming again after a rocky period, and the company is launching the Evora 400 here in December for $89,900. Xcar just got a hold of one of these updated coupes on a rainy day to find out if it can be a Porsche competitor. With 400 horsepower, the aptly named Evora 400 tops the Porsche Cayman GT4 by 15 ponies, and with a purported sprint to 60 miles per hour in 4.1 seconds, the Lotus also nudges out the Porsche by a tenth of a second. So on paper, the two coupes are quite comparable. Of course, Xcar also digs deep into more subjective factors, like how it actually feels behind the wheel. If you think you prefer a little more wind in your hair, the company is developing an Evora 400 roadster, too. Rather than an actual droptop, the roof will reportedly consist of two, removable carbon-fiber panels. It'll arrive on these shores in the coming years as part of Lotus' re-emergence.