Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Caterham To Expand Production (but made in France)

Caterham joint Renault venture

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/marke...s-vehicles.html

http://www.caterhamf1.com/news/2012/caterham-and-renault-to-build-sports-vehicles

I guess that's not so surprising, as Renault Sport are the engine suppliers for the F1 team. I'm all in favour of the revival of the Alpine brand that goes beyond sticking an Alpine badge on a renault hatchback - the A110 was a cracking car. Caterham would certainly be an excellent partner to make such a venture viable. Sadly, reading the articles it seem as though the production of the Alpine and the Caterham cars will be in Dieppe, with yet more manufacturing disappearing from the UK. It's understandable when money is being lost, but is the car building side of Caterham really in the red ? If Tony Fernandez wishes to save money, maybe he'd do better to get rid of QPR.

My apologies to any QPR fans - it's just that I'm still annoyed about the whole business of the Transit factory in Eastleigh being closed while the Turkish transit factory is being expanded thanks to money from the EU.

I should maybe take back the bit I said about production of the seven going to france. This press release states unequivocally that it is to stay in the UK.

http://www.futurecaterham.com/caterham_cars_press_release.pdf

How confusing. I had thought that Lotus had repurchased Caterham but I looked up Caterham, Lotus and then Team Lotus in Wikipedia for anyone interested the links are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterham_Cars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Cars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Lotus_(2010-11)
and finally
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterham_F1_Team

Unless things have changed very recently, Lotus are in crisis after their Malaysian owners sacked their playboy (alleged) CEO.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busine...up-8202915.html

Lotus have always seemed to jerk from crisis to crisis. The range is too expensive new at the moment, but it doesn't sound like many cars are being made. What a shame.
They have an impressive manufacturing base, but can't seem to turn things round.

Loads Of Trouble, Usually Serious...herethey go again...

I'm doing my bit for Lotus....

Given the markets current fetish with efficiency, light weight, agile development to reduce costs I would have thought that Lotus would be doing well on the consultancy side with the cars being poster children for it. They have never had a good home with decent capitalisation sadly. Such a rich skills pool as well.

If only the meglomaniac who used to run VW was still in charge and had added LOTUS to his little tribe alongside Lambo/Bentley etc.

Watching the way Lambo have managed to leverage things and still retain a high degree of identity (but not all) it might have been interesting. I wonder if I will say the same in ten years.

When Lotus announced their plans to go upmarket my heart sank. It nearly did for them in the seventies, and it did for TVR. Once you start getting into BMW M3 up to Porsche 911 territory, customers and critics start to become very unforgiving (witness some of the reviews of the new Plus 8); the car really has to tug at the heart strings to win your cash against such competition.

In truth I think the Elise the best Lotus in decades - certainly the one closest to the old Chapman philosophy of modest engine capacity, very light weight and fabulous handling. It's exactly the segment of the market that Lotus should be occupying, coupled with their famous engineering consultancy work - as you rightly observe, their engineering reputation is stellar.