Deja Vu All Over Again

(bits of Lotus history from "The Lotus Book" and "Lotus Elise, the Official Story")


New car launches:

"The launch of the Elite or Type 75 was originally planned for March 1974 but... customer cars finally went on sale in January of the following year"

"Work on [the] .... Turbo Esprit - began in late 1977. But it was to be... August of [1980] before deliveries...actually began... In 1983 the car was finally 'federalized' and made ready for the company's renewed assault on the USA"

"Although Elise [S1] debuted in September 1995, it was human in gestation, taking fully nine months before the Hethel assembly line gave birth to Elises for the dealerships and an alarming waiting list..."


Marketing communications:

"Some confusion remained, however, as the new car.... was known as both the Eclat S2 and the S2.2... Lotus were occasionally prone to this sort of confusion: the Eclat was at first known in Lotus circles as the Elite Coupe while its eventual replacement, that is to say the car which superceded the S2/2.2, was originally intended to be the Eclat 3. This was then renamed the Eclat Excel, before in October 1982 the company finally settled for simply 'Excel'.... the company showed another new revision, called Riviera..."


Market timing:

"The company, it is true, had not had an easy ride in North America. Plenty of goodwill and enthusiasm traditionally greeted the news of another... new-product launch, but somehow with too few staff and not enough resources Lotus had never cracked its biggest nut... unfortunately, just as the new [Esprit S3 distribution] deal launched, America took a tumble. The exchange rate was worse than it had been for years...