What future for Lotus?

Steve Cropley

- Chinese giant Geely is investing heavily to transform it into a luxury EV brand – and one that sells 10 times as many cars.

Mike Johnstone's charcoal suit matches neatly the tasteful modern walls of Group Lotus's new showroom in Piccadilly, central London, across the road from the Ritz Hotel. The bearded, clear-eyed, late-40s Brit meets us downstairs in a spacious meeting-cum-conference-room basement, with gleaming cars on sale a floor above.

A little over a year ago, Johnstone joined Group Lotus from Volvo as global vice-president in charge of commercial operations. Before that, he had six years with Skoda, having arrived in the automotive business via motorcycle marques that included Harley-Davidson, for which he launched the all-electric (but problematic) Livewire spin-off. Today we're talking about the life and times of the enigmatic Chinesecontrolled Lotus organisation, newly branded by its proprietors as 'Born British, raised globally'.

Johnstone needs a bit of prompting to talk about himself but cheerfully agrees that leading Group Lotus's global commercial operations is a big challenge- although he insists he still sleeps well at night. "I've got a global team of about 700 people to help me," he says. "Together we're responsible for sales, marketing, comms, aftersales, user experience and product strategy. I'm based in London; we're about to open a new office for our central team of 200. And we have offices in the US, Amsterdam and Dubai. Plus Shanghai, obviously." Why choose London for the headquarters? Because there's a great pool of talent here already and talented people from other capitals will come here for the right job. The Lotus of today is quite different from the perpetually strife-torn British sports car maker that existed before Geely took a 51% interest in 2017 and changed everything. Broadly speaking, there are now two Lotus divisions, and they contrast heavily in size.