Lotus Evora crossover, roadster to spearhead expanded Evora

[SAJ]

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Secret-new ... ra-family/

First Gales wants to gently relaunch Lotus at the 2015 Geneva motor show with the refreshed Evora.

‘It will be lighter and it will be faster: there’s nothing this side of £100,000 that will beat it on a track - unless it’s another Lotus,’ Gales told CAR.

Something to be excited about if Gales can deliver on that.

[ryallm]

The improved Evora and 2-Eleven replacement sound very promising . But an SUV style crossover based on the Evora? NO NO NO! Terrible idea

I am also a bit puzzled about the lower and narrower sill for the Evora chassis. If you find the current Evora hard to get in and out of you need to HTFU and get down the Gym

[SAJ]

The improved Evora and 2-Eleven replacement sound very promising . But an SUV style crossover based on the Evora? NO NO NO! Terrible idea

I am also a bit puzzled about the lower and narrower sill for the Evora chassis. If you find the current Evora hard to get in and out of you need to HTFU and get down the Gym

Well if you look at what the Porsche Cayenne did for Porsche then I can understand the logic. So long as it looks good and the quality of finish matches the price point it goes out at it will probably sell quite well.

Half the battle Lotus have is getting their marketing sorted out. I think they are really poor in this area and need to take a leaf out of Jaguar and Audi's book on this front and get some decent TV adverts out their.

[flyingscot68]

Lighter, more powerful, sounds exciting!

I never had problems getting in and out the Evora but it certainly wasn't as easy as most other cars. I think they're right to try this if they want to appeal to a broader audience, particularly our American cousins.

As for the cross-over, who knows, it might be great! I'll reserve judgement on that until I get to see it.

Guess I'd better start saving for a new Evora then. Oh wait - another pay cut on the horizon, it'll have to wait

[SAJ]

Lighter, more powerful, sounds exciting!

I never had problems getting in and out the Evora but it certainly wasn't as easy as most other cars.

With regards to the sills, I know my wife's boss went to check the Evora out recently but he didn't bother with it because it was too difficult for him to get in and out of - he's a big guy.

Oh wait - another pay cut on the horizon, it'll have to wait

I guess I should count myself lucky I'm just not getting my bonus in March. I'm still holding out for a pay rise in January but that is wish full thinking at the moment.

[j2 lot]

Anything that broadens the market for Lotus is a good thing although if they go down the SUV route I hope they at least have a 4wd option , nothing worse than looking the part but not being able to live up to the looks.

[woody]

Anything that broadens the market for Lotus is a good thing although if they go down the SUV route I hope they at least have a 4wd option , nothing worse than looking the part but not being able to live up to the looks.

Agree on both points, however given there's nowhere to put a propshaft and no on the shelf gearbox AFAIK (can't think of anything traverse mid engined with 4WD?) it's unlikely.

[Sanjøy]

Anything that broadens the market for Lotus is a good thing although if they go down the SUV route I hope they at least have a 4wd option , nothing worse than looking the part but not being able to live up to the looks.

Agree on both points, however given there's nowhere to put a propshaft and no on the shelf gearbox AFAIK (can't think of anything traverse mid engined with 4WD?) it's unlikely.

Think outside the box big boy, elec motors in the front hubs....

[BiggestNizzy]

I thought the Evora architecture was flexible, a take on the VVA of old. (remember that bogging 7 seated SUV?) I am expecting something similar to the Evoque and that seems to be selling ok.

Agree with the marketing comments but I doubt they can afford a decent TV ad campaign and its something Porsche don't bother with lifestyle magazine are a better bet.

Edited to add Sanjoy has a point why not go full electric with range extender engine.

[douglasgdmw]

Nice to see that the Evora is getting a facelift. I loved my Evora but sometimes I thought that it could do with a little bit more aggression from the front to make it stand out a lot more. At the end of the day Lotus needs to be bold with their styling to get them a lot more noticed.

Just wondering whether they will make it like the Elan from the Behar launch as I am sure it will sell better with a new face. However that look has been very much taken on by the Lambo, NSX etc.

The Crossover is a good idea but I suspect it is aimed more at Russia/China rather than the Americans. Certainly did little harm for Porsche when they did it - a subset you sell to the masses which then finances your more "focused" cars which in turn drive more demand for the mainstream models due to the "wow" appeal.

However the difficulty will be getting a lot of people into a crossover Lotus. It should be a good model in AsiaPac where the image/desirability of Lotus is better than across here. Most people in the UK would always turn to Porsche/Land Rover etc than buy a Lotus crossover.

George

[Lazydonkey]

[pedant]
Marketing is all about creating a customer need and that starts with the product creation itself. You can't market a product that already exists unless you change it. You can promote it though.
[/pedant]

For lotus i don't think more advertising is the key, You have to first of all look at why they've not sold enough cars.

Styling could be tweaked a bit but personally i love it and i've not met one single bystander who didn't think it looks great (in white at least ) No i don't think styling is not the issue.

Ease of entry into the cabin? Hmmm lower sills on the evora will help but ultimately most porsche customers simply don't even consider a lotus - cos they don't know it exists. My work car park has porsches, GTRs and the occasional TVR and only two Loti. Mine and one S2 Elise. In a company of 600 IT people. That's not enough. Get someone into an Evora and there's a good chance they'll buy it if they can afford it but they need to get into it first, or see one on the road, or on Top Gear or wherever. When i turned up in the evora it caused a stir and loads of people have been asking about it.....as such quite a few have said they'd consider one, must get to dealer etc etc

i live in the largest city in Scotland and i have to drive to Edinburgh to go to the lotus dealer. Those of you in Aberdeen are just as inconvenienced. Now we all have a good relationship with MMC but if Lotus want to sell Porsche volumes they need more dealers and they need more mainstream cars.

A pseudo SUV? Don't care if it makes the stuff i like more viable.

[SAJ]

While I'd agree with the majority of comments I think advertising is key because people simply don't know about the products. A week doesn't go by where someone doesn't ask what the car is or at least confuse it with being a Ferrari. In order for people to want something they 1. need to know about it and 2. need to want to be seen with it.

I think Bahar did attempt to try and do this with all the celebrity stuff but it probably wasn't the best or most cost effective way to start out. Look at the simple Audi R8 V10 Plus advert that has been on TV and in the cinema. Anytime you mention the R8 to any casual individual they 9 times out of 10 have seen that advert. Look at the Jaguar adverts for the F-type people know about these cars and want them because they are made to look desirable. Look at BMW they make all these drift ads with the M cars, they want to make people think buying the car will make them cool and drift kings.

People might disagree on my next point but use Topgear. The day Clarkson said the RS4 was better than the M3 I know of 4 friends that were BMW fanatics that immediately dismissed the M3 and went out and bought the RS4. The majority of car buyers don't have a clue. They go by what they see on TV, what their Idols have and not what the motoring press say. How many non-petrol heads do you know go and read car magazines before purchasing a car, not many I bet. They go to the showroom.

Also the other big issue with the Lotus image is that the first thought anyone has when they talk to you about Lotus is "They make great handling cars" but then shortly followed by "it's probably not that comfortable" you never hear anyone say that about Porsche.

When people hear Lotus they imagine the Elise/Exige and nothing else.

[Shug]

On the advertising front - the actual figures are obviously different now, but the relative spends won't be. To give you an idea what it takes to get a recognisable TV advertising presence, it's a great stat:

In the year the Elise was launched (1996) Ford spent £10 million on advertising one model in the UK (Mondeo). To develop the whole Elise platform and get it to launch from a clean sheet of paper cost £3.7 million.

Whilst the budgets have increased, I don't think Lotus now are in a better position, relatively, than they were in 1996 - the wolf was at the door then, as well. The money to get a meaningful TV advertising presence is way beyond what Lotus are capable of. Jag and Audi are rolling in cash - this makes it significantly easier to sign off tens of millions in TV advertising - Lotus are hacking back on staff to get the wages bill to a place they can afford it...

Lotus are excellent at using the press to publicise their cars (for a brand with so little money) - it's the only reason they sell any to new customers to the brand, if we're honest.

[SAJ]

On the advertising front - the actual figures are obviously different now, but the relative spends won't be. To give you an idea what it takes to get a recognisable TV advertising presence, it's a great stat:

In the year the Elise was launched (1996) Ford spent £10 million on advertising one model in the UK (Mondeo). To develop the whole Elise platform and get it to launch from a clean sheet of paper cost £3.7 million.

Whilst the budgets have increased, I don't think Lotus now are in a better position, relatively, than they were in 1996 - the wolf was at the door then, as well. The money to get a meaningful TV advertising presence is way beyond what Lotus are capable of. Jag and Audi are rolling in cash - this makes it significantly easier to sign off tens of millions in TV advertising - Lotus are hacking back on staff to get the wages bill to a place they can afford it...

Lotus are excellent at using the press to publicise their cars (for a brand with so little money) - it's the only reason they sell any to new customers to the brand, if we're honest.

Well it is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario then as it takes money to make money. Yes they are good at publishing in the motoring press, but how many people actually read motoring magazines. In my office of about 100 people maybe 2 of us read them and I actually haven't bought one for a long time, so it isn't a wide enough spectrum.

Also TV isn't the only way of doing it, look at the millions of people on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Whoever is running the Lotus Facebook page should be shot, there isn't any attempt to make the brand more appealing on that page. Take BMW for example, most of the M car adverts are not TV ads but have gone viral and brings great awareness to the BMW M brand. I might be on my own in this belief but Lotus really do need to market better and make the brand more appealing to the casual driver otherwise they are going to sink again. There just aren't enough die hard Lotus fans or petrolheads to keep them going and Gales knows that otherwise he wouldn't have even bothered thinking about doing an Evora crossover to broaden appeal.

If Gales delivers on his promise making the next Evora faster than any other car under £100k on track (I'm personally doubting this) then stick on the ring and do a Nissan GT-R job. Again doesn't need to be on TV, such a video would go viral and a lot of people would just want it for that alone, I've lost count of how many people I've encountered bought the GT-R just because the GT-R was destroying everything in the price bracket around the ring. Most people will never get close to such a time in the car but it just ends up being about the Kudos of the car having the potential to do so. It is all about image, and people have to want you product whether it is for the right or wrong reasons as that what sells things.

[ryallm]

I don't think advertising or marketing is the key - no amount of advertising or marketing blurb is going to help if you don't have the right product at the right price. Press and Internet coverage these days ensures good cars are effectively self advertising. Don't recall ever seeing an advert for a 911 GT3 but they seem to sell ok. I think the reason the Evora hasn't sold well is that it lists somewhere between a Cayman and a 911 which makes it look overpriced to many people, especially when the quality was a bit suspect on the early cars (the first demo I drove at MMC had bits of interior trim coming loose and it was only just run in). It also suffered by being unfairly ignored by the Bahar era loony management team and for several years it never got the continued development it deserved. Think just how good it could have become if it had a fraction of the honing and fettling that Porsche applies to each 911 iteration.