2012 Lotus Evora GTE live photos

2012 Lotus Evora GTE live photos

Following recent reports that Lotus was ending sponsorship of the Lotus F1 team and, of more concern, could possibly be put into administration by its new parent, Malaysian conglomerate DRB-Hicom, Lotus has gone on the defense with an extensive Facebook rant addressing many of the various allegations.

In particular, Lotus hits out at rival F1 personalities Tony Fernandes, the owner of the Caterham F1 team, and Mike Gascoyne, the team’s technical director.

Lotus also reveals for the first time its new deal with Genii Capital, the current owner of the Lotus F1 team.

Under the agreement, Malaysian automaker Proton, the former parent of Lotus, has provided a £30 million ($48 million) loan to Genii that is repayable within three years. In order to secure the loan Genii used 100 percent of the Lotus F1 team’s assets as collateral, meaning that under the conditions of the loan agreement, Proton has been given full title guarantee to all plant, machinery, show cars, computers, office and the Lotus F1 team headquarters.

On top of this, Proton retains the rights to purchase 10 percent of the Lotus F1 team and another 10 percent share option will be activated if the team defaults on its loan obligations.

As for the automaker’s future viability, Lotus points out that funding for its ambitious five-year sports car plan has been frozen while DRB-Hicom completes its due diligence of Lotus.  It also states that at no point has DRB-Hicom made mention of putting the automaker into administration.

Interestingly, Lotus didn’t address allegations that it may be sold to a Chinese firm. One potential bidder is rumored to be former Saab bidder Zhejian Youngman Lotus Automobile, the official importer of Lotus cars in China.

Dany Bahar

Dany Bahar

Hopefully Lotus can come out of the mess it appears to be getting itself into and once again build and sell some of the best sports cars on the planet. Whether current CEO Dany Bahar, consultant Swizz Beatz, and official tuning firm Mansory can get them there remains to be seen. Only time will tell.

The official response from Lotus is pasted below.

Lotus: Never let the facts get in the way of a good story….

Take a little look at what we found online. Don’t you think it’s funny? We do. We had a good old giggle. After all, we love a bit of self irony, just as well really. Although it’s funny, this one’s not accurate but then again, why let the facts get in the way of a good story? The inconvenient truth is – surprise, surprise – we have never said that there are no problems at Lotus.

So whilst lots of people obviously feel the need to comment on Lotus’ current situation in the absence of proper facts or evidence, we can’t ignore these particular mistruths any longer even if we would like to, so we have decided to turn a negative into a positive and use this hilarious piece of ‘art’ to set the record straight regarding the status quo at Group Lotus and try to return a little stability to a fast changing situation.

False rumour #1: Dany Bahar is no longer CEO of Group Lotus.
Fact: Rubbish – Dany Bahar still is.

False rumour #2: Dato’ Sri Syed is no longer Managing Director of Proton.
Fact: Again rubbish. He still is.

You can thank good old Tony Fernandes for these two. Don’t take everything he tweets too seriously – perhaps he’s still frustrated about owning Caterham instead of Lotus and the fact that he fights HRT and Marussia instead of Mercedes and Ferrari in F1.

And whilst we’re on the subject of jokes - do you know the latest F1 joke? Mike Gascoyne, Caterham Group’s Chief Technical Officer, has gone missing. Why? He’s looking for the 30 to 40 points he predicted for the last F1 season. Funny.

Speaking of F1: It seems that one special so called ‘independent’ source is at the root of the lion’s share of damaging rumours and misleading stories. The delightful Joe Saward which leads us nicely to….

False rumour #3: Joe Saward is JUST an independent journalist.
Fact: He is an active Director for the Caterham Group.

And unlike some, we don’t want to get too personal, so we’ll leave it to you to judge how ‘independent’ his stories about Lotus are.

False rumour #4: Group Lotus is no longer involved in F1.

Fact: Lotus F1 Team and Group Lotus have reshaped their commercial relationship earlier this year. The new governance agreement signifies the continued commitment of Group Lotus to the team and the sport.

Group Lotus’ branding and marketing rights and subsequent activities remain unaffected by the new agreement until at least 2017. Alongside continued branding and title partnership status, Group Lotus is also the exclusive master licensee for all Lotus F1 Team merchandise.

The new agreement was reached following Group Lotus owners Proton providing team owners Genii with a £30m loan which is repayable within three years. In order to secure the loan Genii used 100% of the F1 team’s assets as collateral meaning that under the conditions of the loan agreement Proton have been given full title guarantee to all plant, machinery, show cars, computers, office and the Lotus F1 Team headquarters.

In addition Proton retains the rights to purchase 10% of the F1 team. Another 10% share option will be activated if the team default on their loan obligations with Proton.

Again we leave it to your judgement how ‘bad’ Lotus’ current situation in F1 is. And speaking of bad situations…..

False rumour #5: Group Lotus is going into administration.
Fact: Rubbish. The takeover of our parent company Proton by DRB-HICOM couldn’t have come at a worse time, but up until that point Proton was (and still remains) fully committed to our five year business plan to create jobs and to expand the factory and business. With the takeover process the funding has been restricted and DRB-HICOM is taking time to understand what to do with the business. DRB-HICOM is currently in the middle of due diligence of Group Lotus and there have been and continue to be positive discussions between Group Lotus senior management and senior management at DRB-HICOM both here in Hethel and in Malaysia. At no point has DRB-HICOM indicated to Group Lotus that it intends to put the company into administration. The over-active rumour mill is seriously damaging our business reputation, image and credibility but it is what it is.

The simple fact is, and we haven’t denied this - Lotus is going through a very difficult phase at the moment but we are showing true fighting spirit every day in trying to keep this vision alive. This is also a fact – no matter what people outside of Lotus may say or tweet or blog.