Lotus cancels the Esprit once again

A few days ago, DRB-Hicom extended its programme to keep Lotus afloat. This will give more breathing room to the struggling British company to rebuild its image, by creating a programme to produce new versions of the existing models. This does not mean there will be major Lotus news, at least for another two years.

But what will happen to the Esprit? The return of the famous Lotus sports car has been on the brink for a couple of years now. From time to time we have come across reports saying it was being cancelled, only for confirmation to follow that it would indeed reach production. The latest news we had said the Esprit was secured. However, we are back to square one, and it seems the Esprit is almost certainly not part of DRB-Hicom’s most recent plans.

When Dany Bahar held the position of CEO of the brand, he had an ambitious project in mind involving five models. The Esprit/Elite/Eterne/Elan/Elise would be new models arriving over a span of six years. Of course, given the increasingly worrying situation of the brand, the Malaysian owners have decided to cut out everything the dismissed Bahar had planned earlier. It is time to clean up the company and save as much capital as possible.

Some more optimistic voices, such as the current CEO of Lotus, have mentioned that the Esprit may still be saved if the company’s situation improves significantly, as it has over the last year. The Esprit meant designing a new platform shared by the also new Elite and Eterne and using V8 engines from Infiniti, until the situation improved enough to allow the use of in-house engines.

Source | Motortrend