Lotus Plans to Increase Sales Five Times by 2015

Lotus, like all well-known but small sports car manufacturers nowadays, wants to become more mainstream, more widely-known and, of course, sell more of its cars. Now, with the ambitious Malaysian company behind Lotus, DRB-Hicom, pushing hard, the famed UK automaker has now set itself a very ambitious target.

They plant to sell 4,000 - 5,000 cars per year, by 2015, which is about five times what they sell now. They aim to do this by tapping into a very promising market - China. Along with the US market, and Japan (and even Malaysia), they hope to sell a lot more than the 1043 units they sold in 2012 (down from 1457 in 2011).

According to DRB-Hicom boss, Datuk Seri Mohd Khamil Jamil, “To change something that has been there for 16 years is not easy, but the management team is very innovative and forthcoming. We know there is competition in the market [ . . . ] However, with our quality and standard enhancements of the Lotus, we are confident we can compete.”

Still, they will als need new and better quality models if they want to even get close to the desired sales figure, and since they have not conclusively announced any new models any time soon, they either have to, or give up on the 5,000 sales per year dream.