RICHARD MEADEN

Lotus's current plight leaves a saddened Meaden pondering what might have been

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MANY YEARS AGO I WROTE A COLUMN SAYING how I thought the best thing for the long-term future of Lotus Cars would be for the company to be bought by the Volkswagen Group.

At the time I didn't know VW had been considering a deal to acquire the Norfolk sports car brand, though in hindsight it does explain the somewhat testy email I received from the Lotus PR department shortly after it was published.

This was well before Dieselgate, which cost VW bazillions and put paid to Audi and Porsche's Le Mans programme. Likely it would also have had ramifications for a newly acquired sports car brand in need of huge investment. Still, the notion of Lotus having access to VW's vast resources is one of the great what-ifs.

Instead, Lotus endured a succession of tumultuous ups and downs, the most infamous being the Dany Bahar era. There's too much ground to cover the full extent of it here, but, as you'll recall, the ex-Ferrari and Red Bull man presented his vision for a reinvented Lotus Cars at the 2010 Paris Show: an all-new five-car range comprising a new Esprit supercar, next-gen Elise sports car, Aston Rapide-style Eterne four-seater, 911-rivalling Elan and the Elite, which from memory was a front-engined roadster a bit like a Ferrari California.