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Lotus Still Considering SUV, Sedan Amid Job Cuts

About a month ago, reports indicated that Lotus could be planning to introduce an SUV and a D-segment sedan, but that was before the British sports car maker announced that it would be cutting 325 jobs (a quarter of its workforce) due to growing losses. Despite this setback, it sounds like there are no changes in the launch more mainstream models.
2010 Lotus Eterne Concept 1 photo
Photo: Lotus
Lotus Group CEO Jean-Marc Gales confirmed the previous report by talking to Autocar.co.uk in which he was quoted as saying: "You will see many new variants of familiar Lotus models over the next nine months, and even more in the next two years. Our cars will be faster, better made and more convenient to use but we will keep our relationship with Toyota as an engine partner so the cars will be also be very reliable and easy to own.”

As many other luxury automakers have learned, there is a considerable market for utility vehicles and large sedans, so adding one to the Lotus lineup would help inject some much needed cash into the automaker. For each of the last two years, Lotus has suffered a net loss of more than £100 million ($162 million U.S. and 127 million euros). Even worse, this comes less than a year after Lotus received a substantial grant from the U.K. government for new-product development and hiring 300 employees.

But there is some positive light in the Lotus camp as 2014 sales are up 46 percent and the company expects to have global sales of 2,000 units. Lotus plans to almost double its global dealership network (to a total of 20) to which Gale believes will help push sales closer to the 3,000 unit mark… using the current lineup. Adding new models in vastly popular segments would help sales immensely.
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