15/07/2012
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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There is a Formula One team called Lotus. It has also been known as Toleman, Benetton and Renault. There was a team called Lotus which is now called Caterham. Then there is Lotus, a small maker of sports cars which once was associated with Team Lotus and a period of Formula One excellence which has never been rivalled.
Actual Lotus and Pretend Lotus are different things, but Actual Lotus strikes a chord in many an enthusiast's heart. Its close associate, Team Lotus, gave us World Champions like Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt, Emerson Fittipaldi and Mario Andretti.
Lotus gave Nigel Mansell his start in F1 and John Surtees and Sir Jackie Stewart. Jackie Stewart in an F1 Lotus? It was in the non-Championship Rand GP at Kyalami on 12th December, 1964. Jackie set pole and a half-shaft snapped at the start. He never again drove a Lotus, but the fact remains that his first F1 drive was for Team Lotus.
On 1st November, 1952, an advertisement appeared in Motor Sport magazine offering people the chance to buy a Lotus Mk VI kit car, a special builder had become a manufacturer in a small way. That is why Lotus was the featured marque at this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed.
I wonder whether the company will be around to celebrate its 61st birthday. Lotus is effectively bust. The company is laying off workers and has disaffected suppliers. If you cannot pay your suppliers, you cannot make cars.
According to a distinguished journalist of my acquaintance, the company made just two cars in May, you cannot make cars if you do not pay your suppliers. Even if my friend has been misinformed, that story is in the air.
A well-placed source has told me that even were I to place an order for an Evora (yes, please, pretty please) I could not have one because the suppliers have not been paid.
Lotus was the featured marque at this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed. Because of all the media attention, this honour receives, there is a cost: GBP 600,000. For such as Ford, Audi or Honda, this is small change from the PR and advertising budget. For a company which cannot pay its suppliers, this is a serious sum.
For the Festival, Gerry Judah created one of his best giant sculptures. The cost, however, was GBP 1.75 million. That is two and a half million quid before we get to the Lotus grandstand and the Lotus corporate hospitality. Even when you are bust, you have to have corporate hospitality.
A guy I knew, a top television executive and a weak member of my pub quiz team, once told me, 'There are three things that tell you when a company is in trouble: 'They build a new atrium, buy a helicopter and commission a new logo.'
The Goodwood splurge typifies the approach of its last CEO, Dany Bahar, who has been sacked. It is bullshit, like some other of Bahar's schemes and announcements. Were I a cynic I would say that the presence at Goodwood was typical of a thimble-rigger.
A good rule is that when the citizens are running you out of town, you try and make it look like you are leading the big parade.
Proton was the parent company until earlier this year. When Proton bought Lotus, I breathed a sigh of relief. Proton was a company which appeared to be going places and, sensibly, Proton did not interfere with Lotus's main line of business. That is not building cars, but acting as a consultant to the motor industry. Nobody knows more about road holding and handling than Lotus.
Meanwhile, Proton has not kept pace with Korean companies launched about the same time. While Hyundai and Kia have gone from selling on price alone to making some rather good cars, Proton has not developed.
When it was launched, Malaysian journalists were ordered not to say anything negative about a warmed-over Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi once had a stake in Proton. Proton has often been outsold by a newcomer, Perodua. Most readers will not have encountered the make, but I had a Perodua Nippa on test for a week and I liked it. I would not want one, but I was writing for a daily newspaper and you could not escape the price.
We all buy on price and some people get a special bang from owning a new car.
The UK was one of Proton's target markets for the simple reason that, like Malaysia, we drive on the left, in the Roman way. Did Jesus tell people to go the extra 1.6 kilometres? I think not. Driving on the right is French and everything French is plain wrong. Apart from Catherine Deneuve, obviously.
It is very expensive to engineer a car so that it can be offered in both formats. The last sales figures I have for Proton in the UK report sales of fewer than a thousand units.
In January, Proton sold Group Lotus to another Malaysian company, DRB-Hicom, whose main business is importing cars, which carried out an audit. This brings us to Dany Bahar, the man who was going to save Lotus.
In 2010, Bahar announced a five-model programme which would elevate Lotus to the level of Aston Martin or Maserati. It was never going to happen, Bahar was living on Fantasy Island. For one thing, he did not tell the engineers how they would achieve this.
Bahar's grandiose plan would have cost billions to implement. You can no longer run up a kit car in a shed, actually a stable in the case of Lotus, and take on the world. McLaren has taken on Ferrari in the supercar market, but McLaren has massive funding from the Middle East. It ran two dozen test cars all over the world in different climates and conditions.
In some Middle Eastern countries it is not just the temperature which causes problems, it is the sand blown on the wind. It is that attention to detail which is now required.
Proton has many problems of its own and does not want to be involved in issues surrounding the appointment of Bahar. Proton appointed him, the new owners inherited him. On 29th June they announced the suspension of three senior Lotus executives, all in the human resources or financial sectors, none in engineering. It was a decision taken at board level, in Malaysia, not by the guy parachuted in to hold the fort.
These people have been suspended and not, at the time of writing, sacked. It does not escape my sense of irony that 29th June was the opening of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, when they would have been swanning around and not explaining to the missus that there had been some ghastly mistake.
Here is one example of embarrassment. Bahar had a rented house in Hethersett, Norfolk, and he ordered improvements amounting to nearly 375,000 quid. That is a hefty amount to spend on a house you own, but Bahar was renting. A builder claims to be owed GBP 92,485.
There is a case pending in Norwich Crown Court and it is possible that some of the bad stuff will come out. Norwich is the main town in Norfolk, where Lotus is based. The Norwich Evening News is on the case. Newspapers everywhere are feeling the pinch, but a strong local story, involving a major local employer, is manna from Heaven.
All year the paper has been carrying reports of the rumoured possibility of moving Lotus away from Norfolk. Inevitably, China has been mentioned. British engineering, Chinese labour rates, I can see sense in that. The Prime Minister is said to be keeping a close watch on the situation as is the Business Secretary, Vince Cable.
Here is an irrelevant fact: I spent a year in the same class at school as Dr. Cable. I have no recollection of a bald kid, keen on sums.
Rumours of Lotus possibly going into administration have been rife all year.
According to Reuters, Dany Bahar is suing DRB-Hicom for wrongful dismissal. If that comes to trial, it could be very entertaining.
It will not come to trial. The default position of anyone found with their hands in the cookie jar is to threaten to sue. Bahar is a charmer, he charmed his way into Goodwood, Red Bull and Ferrari before he was rumbled. He is one of those guys you cannot help but like, but you are well advised to count your fingers after shaking his hand.
Bahar commissioned 375,000 spondulicks of renovation on a rented property and Group Lotus actually paid most of that. Group Lotus paid more than a quarter of a million quid, the cost of a hundred cars. Do you smell anything fishy in the deal? The suspended Lotus executives are not engineers.
Everything now depends on DRB-Hicom. It has bought a famous brand, but it has also inherited mismanagement and, possibly, corruption on a large scale.
Lotus is close to my heart and has been for most of my life. Group Lotus is not the same as the team for which Jim Clark drove, but they share the same DNA and I reckon that is a bit special.
Mike Lawrence
mike.lawrence@pitpass.com
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