Lotus, “by-eck-du-we-luv-em”, no we did not just use a Latin phrase this is how people of the North of Englandshire talk.They also drink Yorkshire tea… which is grown in India.
But Lotus, oh for where art thou been, for so long they have had a relationship with the “topsy” and the “turvey” which is English colloquialism for confused or disordered.
There is no doubt about the Lotus heritage or its engineering brilliance but it always seems to be floating rather than performing robustly. A little bit like us at DCB Towers. But not anymore.
Lotus have announced a 55 percent increase in global cars sales, 2,015 units we kid you not. That’s up from the 1,296 units shifted in 2013/14, the most units sold since 2008/09.
Lotus’s key global markets performed strongly in China (+186%), France (+177%) and Germany (+130%), while Japan (+103%) remains the company’s largest export market.
Sales in the UK have more than doubled to 346 units (+102%). The USA market, which sells the Evora range as a road car and the Elise and Exige ranges for track use only, has increased by 24%.
The Elise is leading the pack for overall sales with a 80% increase in volume to 729 cars. The Exige S didn’t do too bad either (+52%) with 724 cars, while the Evora is up by 35% with 562 cars.
Lotus expects more demand once the Evora 400 is launched in August. Naturally new CEO Jean Marc Gales was positivly delighted “This positive result is something that we have not witnessed at Lotus for many years. We are meeting both time and budget deadlines. Yet, we appreciate that we still have hard work to do to maintain the progress. Our continued expansion demonstrates the customer confidence in Lotus and that our product development strategy is meeting its objectives, while remaining true to our core pillars of efficiency, light weight, high performance and driving purity in the most desirable packaging.”
The key driver to Lotus’s recovery is the establishment of 36 dealers over the last 11 months, more dealers mean more opportunities to sell cars. The global dealership network is now 176 strong.
It sounds like a simple formula but a lack of a strong dealership network has really hurt the potential of Lotus.
The next 18 months will see new product announcements coming thick and fast from Lotus.
