How GM's ownership of Lotus went 'appallingly wrong'
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The secondary goal was replacing the dated Excel with a Ferrari Testarossa-rivalling supercar, the Etna, which would use an in-house V8 and cutting-edge active suspension. And then there was “expansion of the engineering consultancy business, plus contract design and production of special editions for other manufacturers”.
Annual production was to grow tenfold to 5000 by the early 1990s and staff to 1200 after a new site had been built in Humberside, Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands or Canada.
“You have no idea how good it felt to be able to put together a six-year plan knowing we should be able to see it through without a financial crisis,” Kimberley told us.
In January 1990, our road testers declared: “For all their common roadster appeal, there is a gulf between the [FWD] Elan and [new] Mazda MX-5 in dynamic ability, one that the biggest price differential imaginable couldn’t in the end fully compensate for. This is the extent of Lotus’s achievement. The Mazda is a mere supporting act to the main event.” Yeah, no.
While the MX-5 was oversubscribed, nobody wanted the Elan – particularly in the vital American market. So after not even two years, Lotus abandoned its baby.
“The 3000-a-year volume at the time was sound, perhaps slightly optimistic. The car could have worked had it not been for the [US] recession,” Kimberley told us. “There has been no pressure to make this announcement. GM is determined never to pull the plug on Lotus. The business was literally going nowhere and we had to stop the bleeding.”
Former chairman Alan Curtis, who had masterminded the 1986 sale, added: “Lotus thought it could walk on water. We convinced GM we could. But not too many people can do that. Left to me, the Elan would never have been built. It provided nothing but heartache.
