Good news out of Lotus, of the kind that I suspect we should get used to in the short term: a new hiring.
It takes less time to put people in place than it does cars into production, even under the stewardship of a company like Lotus’s Geely parent, which has recently transformed Volvo.
Geely has just appointed Phil Popham (formerly of Jaguar Land Rover and latterly of Sunseeker) as CEO of Lotus Sports Cars and senior vice president for commercial operations of Group Lotus.
If Geely’s plan with Lotus goes anything like it did with Volvo, which it took over in 2010, things will go a bit quiet barring announcements like this one. And then – boom – the model introduction will start. Volvo’s XC90 only went into production late in 2014 but, when a new V40 arrives next year, it’ll be the oldest car in a nine-model line-up.
Popham’s appointment prompted some discussion among my colleagues: do people, aside from people like us, know what a Lotus actually is these days? It has been so long since it won an F1 world title or James Bond drove an Esprit that you wonder whether in the wider world people know what Lotus, which has been turning out brilliant-handling lightweight sports cars but for not enough money and in not enough quantities, actually stands for?