“That car was rubbish,” he says with feeling. “Bits kept falling off. I got through two sets of brake discs in the first year. It was fast and at times I enjoyed driving it. The engine was beautiful. But I got to know my dealership far too well, and they weren’t much use. It taught me that, however desirable, cars still need quality and reliability. After a couple of years, I took the biggest hit of my life and sold it for eight grand…”
Windle progressed fast at Lotus. Working with Rackham and his skilled acolytes was the perfect way to build engineering skills. He enjoyed dealing directly with the client, Aston Martin (“they seemed to like me being around”), and this led to more customer-facing roles and a more direct practice of management skills, which he enjoyed.
Then, in 2005, now 34, he moved to Tesla, whose one product at the time was the Elise-based Tesla Roadster.
Tesla Roadster
“At first, changing jobs was just a matter of crossing the corridor,” he says, “but soon my boss moved to the US, and I was pretty much in charge of what we were doing in Norfolk. Then I moved to the US. Those were great years. We needed to adapt – essentially beef up – the Lotus Elise chassis to carry the battery and extend the body to have the car in production for 2008, and we did that.”
During that time, Windle spent time with Tesla boss Elon Musk: “He was extremely intelligent, but if you delivered, you didn’t have a problem with him. SpaceX was also under way at the time, so he was incredibly busy, but in meetings you still always felt that you had his full attention. He taught me that it’s okay to make a quick decision if that makes more sense than a delay.”
Windle loved his Silicon Valley experience, the “surf in the morning, stay till midnight” work-life thing. The Roadster was launched in 2008 as a groundbreaking product, but only 2500 were built over three years.
“We would have built more,” says Windle, “but Lotus had their own big plans.” That’s his way of referencing the now-infamous Dany Bahar era, when five concept cars were unveiled in one day at a memorable Paris motor show.