Friday 9th November 2001

Lightning Yellow VX220

Limited edition with lots of extras unveiled to tempt winter buyers

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[campbell]

Lotus should concentrate on there own cars first and then on the other project after that

[PetrolTed]

Disagree. GM's involvement is a very good thing for Lotus. They are learning a lot from GM in terms of larger volume manufacture and quality control.

[jdoe]

Looks good as well. Bit rarer than an elise these days!

[campbell]

Mabe your right Ted but I think that Lotus sould realy get one project off the ground before taking on another. It's a grate thing for Lotus to be able to produce a larger amount of cars and have a better quality conrtol, But at what cost to them and how will that afect them in the future ?
And this VX220 definatly looks better than te new Elise but how do the two compare on cost and performance ?
Thank Ted

[ATG]

Seems odd to be involved in a product that competes head to head with one of their own. They seemed to be on safer ground when they were developing suspension for the Scorpion tank or souping up saloons.

[PetrolTed]

They still do the engineering stuff, but that's a separate division of the company (and a larger one I think). At the end of the day they still make money from VX220 sales and it retains exclusivity of Lotus, so I suppose you could argue it's still a good thing.

[Nightmare]

ATG...i think its very clever marketing in certain ways (though my experience of Lotus marketing suggests it would be more luck than judgement ). As Ted says, not only has it given them loads of experience of working at scale, and sorting out QA issues (my elise 2 is a quantum leap from any other lotus Ive seen), but it shows the world that Lotus involvement in any project produces fine results. They need not fear competition - badge brand differentiation does that for them...and the products are actually very different (well as diff as say an elise and a caterham)

Night