Lotus Not Selling Enough Cars

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Tue, 11 Oct 2011

Lotus is to increase its efforts in boosting flagging sales, with new figures showing that a 24 per cent drop in the number of Lotus cars registered in the UK.

A senior official at the company has warned that the company is not selling enough cars . While 358 Lotus models were registered in the first eight months of 2010, only 272 cars were sold in the same period this year.

Former BMW executive Karl-Heinz Kalbfell, who was brought in late last year to mentor Lotus CEO Dany Bahar, said the carmaker is now looking to increase Lotus’s sales in the short term.

He said: "The brand is well known but the products are not. We are focusing on a new range of cars, but we must sell more cars now."

"We have some great cars in our range, like the Evora. Now the point must be to get the car on the shopping list of buyers."

The Lotus Elise and Evora models account for the majority of the firm’s sales, and the company is hoping that the introduction of a new 438bhp V6 Evora GTE will warm up customers for the new, £100k-plus Esprit, due for launch late next year.

Another model expected to bridge the gap between the lower-end models and the Esprit is the Exige S, which is powered by a 350bhp V6 engine and weighs just 1080kg.

At a retail price of £40k, Kalbfell believe the car will be unrivalled in terms of performance at that cost.