Chinese-built crossover will resemble sporty Elite, Hethel boss Jean-Marc Gales tells Paul Horrell
As he launches the most Lotus-ish Lotus ever, the super-light and fighting-fit 3-Eleven, Lotus boss Jean-Marc Gales takes some time to justify to TopGear what must be the least Lotus-ish Lotus ever: the upcoming, Chinese-built SUV crossover.
The SUV will be the result of a joint venture Lotus signed last year with Goldstar Heavy Industrial of Quanzhou city. Mind you, if it ever goes on sale in Britain, it won’t be until about 2022. So if you furiously judge this a Lotus sell-out, you still have several years for your anger to subside.
Of course Gales believes that making an SUV will bolster profit. Building an SUV is standard operating procedure for a sports-car company these days, right?
And in most of its 63 years, Lotus has shown the opposite of profit. But Gales reckons an SUV will do something else too: improve the sports cars.
Seriously, how can an SUV match Lotus’s values? “If Colin Chapman was alive I believe he would have done one,” says Gales. “It will be the size of a Porsche Macan but only 1600kg, and will be the most agile and fastest of that class on a track. Lamborghini is doing a SUV like that in their segment, we can do it in our segment.”
Gales repeatedly stresses the weight issue. “It’s logical for us to make one in the Macan segment - the rest are all two tonnes, even a BMW X3. They take a normal car platform with big tyres and brakes and transmission. We will use a four-cylinder engine.”
That’ll be Lotus’s existing supercharged Toyota-derived unit, though a diesel will be needed for Europe. “We’ll take 250kg out, so we can have smaller brakes, we can use Evora seats,” Gales adds.
We always thought the appeal of SUVs is they feel heavy and robust. Still, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe a chink of a sales opening exists for something lighter.
The vehicle will be Lotus-branded but built at a new joint-venture factory in China, aimed at the vast and growing Chinese market for crossovers.
Manufacture there is an exercise in red tape. The procedure is that the authorities grant a manufacturing licence only after the prototype has been built and the business plan written. Those two things are happening now, Gales says.
He adds sales of the SUV should begin in China at the end of 2019 or in 2020. If that goes well, it might come here afterwards. “We have protected the package and technology for Europe.”
It originates here too. “It’s being designed and engineered and prototyped at Hethel,” he says. “We are evaluating two full-scale design models at the moment. They are very sporty and they look very Lotus. They have a modern Lotus nose, and a hint of the 1974 four-seat Elite [pictured above] on the side. They look lightweight.”
But Lotus doesn’t only make cars noted for light weight and brilliant handling. It has also traditionally been noted for making cars that aren’t entirely watertight, that have untrustworthy electrics and wonky panel gaps.
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