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In 1997, Lotus’s acting CEO, Mohamed Zainal, who was the initial executive assigned to Hethel by Proton after it purchased the company in late 1996, told his U.S. dealers that a federal Elise would be available within 18 months. In 1998, Lotus’s board of directors first committed in principle to the idea of producing such a car. The following year, the board approved Arnie Johnson’s business plan for the model. In numerous trips to the factory since then, Johnson continued to press his case. But, with the Elise continuing to sell well elsewhere with nice profit margins, other projects were always given higher priority. Even when Johnson framed his argument for a federal car with then-CEO Chris Knight in stark monetary terms – that each year’s delay meant another $10 million left on the table that Lotus would not be able to get back – he was not able to carry the day.

Several factors combined to produce a favorable decision at this time, and the demise of the M250 played no small role. Previous plans called for the M250 – initially in convertible form – to succeed the federal Esprit and become the centerpiece of Lotus Cars USA’s future, regardless of whether the Elise ever got to the States. Without the M250, and with its replacement three years away at the very least, LCU was faced with the unhappy prospect of having no product to sell once the Esprit had run its course.

According to the same company spokesman who denied that the federal Elise had been approved, Lotus’s commitment to the Esprit remains “open-ended.” In fact, the company has only enough parts – including the lifetime buy-in of many items that are no longer being made – to produce 225 more Esprits. LCU has been selling approximately 150 Esprits annually in recent years, and, in the present soft economy, it expects to sell only about 125 of them in 2001. Even so, with a few Esprits still being sold annually in the U.K. and Europe, that rate of U.S. sales means that the model’s quarter-century-long run will come to an end by about mid-2003. By then, the car will also be living on the last federal waiver that it can reasonably expect to get; its current waiver runs out in September 2002, and another year’s extension should be obtainable without difficulty, but it would be unlikely to get a bye on the tougher federal regulations that 2004 model-year cars will have to meet. Next Page