Dany Bahar, the current CEO of Lotus is reportedly looking for a buyer to purchase the company from current Malaysian parent Proton.

Given that Proton itself was recently acquired by Malaysian conglomerate DRB-Hicom, the reason for Bahar’s strategy is probably the fact that DRB has little interest investing in a small volume specialty sports car brand, especially since Lotus hasn’t earned a profit since being originally acquired by Proton in 1996.

At present, Lotus requires funding of around £500m ($790 million) for the development of future street cars, which includes new Elan, Elise and Esprit models.

So far, no offers for purchasing Lotus have been confirmed, though some sources say that Genii Capital, the international investment firm which currently owns the Lotus Formula 1 Grand Prix team, would seem the most likely scenario, though reportedly a number of Chinese companies have also expressed interest.

[Source: Auto Express]

Rumors of the sale of Lotus by its Malaysian parent company Proton have increased steadily since the appointment of CEO Dany Bahar, who has done little to dissuade the rumors. Rather than a sign of instability, Proton has committed to funding the “new Lotus”, and Bahar’s actions have helped keep the small sports car maker in the headlines.

The latest rumor mongering comes from AutoCar, which quotes Bahar as admitting, “Proton could sell Lotus.” In an interview Bahar outlines three clear paths proton could take, “Proton could keep Lotus, float it off or sell it outright.”

Far from speculating, Bahar is simply spelling out reality, commenting that, “It would be quite understandable if an owner that has invested so much wanted to see a return on its investment, especially if the buyer were a major car maker that could back Lotus for the long term.”

Any return on investment won’t happen, however, until Bahar has built Lotus into a desirable company, one that makes money and one that sells cars consumers really want to buy. At last year’s Paris Auto Show, Lotus unveiled its plan for the future, with numerous new models starting with the Esprit, which is set to launch next year.

GALLERY: Lotus Esprit Concept

[Source: AutoCar]

Fans of Formula 1 racing and Lotus must have spent this year feeling a bit confused regarding who they should support, since there were two teams going by the name Lotus.

There was Team Lotus, a private team founded by Tony Fernandes (who also owns Caterham Cars), and then there was Group Lotus which was run by Lotus (the guys who make the cars) and their parent company Proton.

The two teams fought over the naming rights. Group Lotus said that the name Lotus belongs to them, while Team Lotus said that their name has always operated in motorsports as a separate entity to the road car business.

Who gets what naming rights was up to the courts to decide, and the verdict is in. Group Lotus is to keep the rights to the Lotus name in motorsports, which means they now own the rights to the Team Lotus name also.

In what is being described as a amicable settlement between the two parties, the former Team Lotus, which is also owned by 1 Malaysia Racing Team, will rename themselves as the Caterham F1 Team for the 2012 season.

Group Lotus CEO Dany Bahar said at the announcement that, “On behalf of Group Lotus and Proton, I would like to express how pleased we are that this matter is finally closed and we can now focus on looking forward to the future.”

The new deal will also lead to a working relationship between the two parties over future automotive projects.

Caterham, a company that started out life as a Lotus dealer, who got the manufacturing rights to the Lotus 7 and has been producing the car for over 30 years now, will now be its own force in Formula 1. Recognition of the Caterham brand will thus grow on a global scale.

In a fit of corporate community outreach, Lotus hired Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Daoud Dean) to head Lotus’s Creative Design department, which may sound like the plot to a screwball 80′s comedy (Gung Ho meets Trading Places?) but actually came with a press release.

The rapper and hip-hop producer wasn’t just chosen to become Lotus’s spokesman—no, he is officially the vice president of Creative Design and Global Marketing, a position which comes with free coffee in the Lotus corporate break room. Turns out, Mr. Beatz is an avid car collector, with a Spyker C8 and a Ferrari Enzo in his stable, but presumably not a 1978 Eclat 22. He joins Victoria Beckham in the position of unlikely celebrity executive, where she is the creative design executive for Land Rover.

In the video after the jump, Lotus explains what he’ll be expected to bring to the table. But what makes Swizz Beatz the perfect man for the Norfolk company? “Three little facts,” Lotus says:
1. Like Group Lotus , he means business: He’s a risk taker with considerable credentials including music producer, rapper, designer AND painter.
2. Like our cars, he’s multi award winning: This year he shared a Grammy Award with Jay-Z.
3. Like Group Lotus he keeps good company: This man regularly works with the likes of Bono, Kanye West, Beyoncé and Alicia Keys.

Swizz Beatz is a stepping stone to other famous artists—which Lotus hopes, not unlike a comely teenage girl who waits outside the jock quarterback’s locker after classes, will net them even more friends and that vaunted 18-34 demographic that marketing people keep talking about. What better way for Lotus to convince hip-hop moguls to replace their Maseratis and Bentleys and Maybachs…hold on, scratch that last one. Biggie might not have fit in an Exige, but Yeezy could. Whether he actually wants to is up to Dany Bahar’s salesmanship and size-11 Loakes.

But we wish Lotus well, of course. After all, they are merely adhering to Colin Chapman’s previously-truncated quip: “simplify, and make it rain, dogg.”

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Ever since the Lotus Esprit V8 went out of production in 2004, Lotus has been exclusively using Toyota engines for its cars. While these motors have provided power and reliability, many customers of the brand feel that the company should have its own engines. After all, can you imagine a Ferrari being powered by anything other than their own engines?

Dany Bahar, CEO of Lotus agrees and wishes to develop engines bespoke for its automobiles. Since Lotus is delaying the Elan, the funds earmarked for that car can now be used towards developing new engines.

Bahar said, “This is a big [financial] hit because it’s expensive to do 
an engine. But 
because the Elan is not happening now we have got capital expenditure headroom 
for engine development.”

The work on these new engines has already began, and the first prototype V8 should breathe into life by this July. Power output is expected to be around the 570-hp mark, to compete with the likes of Ferrari.

The push for these new engines came from an internet survey Lotus conducted in which 10,000 people took part. The majority favored Lotus to put their efforts behind their own engines.

The plan is to design a modular V8 which can spawn a four-cylinder engine also for use in the next Elise. However, if that doesn’t work out, they will continue using Toyota engines.

Expect the first of the new breed of Lotus road cars to hit the streets by 2013.

[Source: Autocar]

What season of F1 would be complete without the off-track drama? The complex battle between racing teams Group Lotus and Team Lotus rages on, indicating that the previous ruling for the rights to the Lotus name didn’t end the dispute yet.

Turns out, the high court judge had given Group Lotus the go-ahead to use the Lotus roundel, the “Lotus” name, and the retro-tastic black-and-gold livery. But it hadn’t entirely ruled out Team Lotus’s involvement in the sport, and parent company 1Malaysia Racing Team can still use the name and logo “Team Lotus.” This, for Group Lotus CEO Dany Bahar, is a problem.

And as such, he is planning to appeal the ruling and eliminate the confusion: “it is inevitable that the similarity of the names Lotus and Team Lotus will cause confusion not only amongst F1 supporters and the wider public,” he said, “but also amongst F1 commentators who use the word ‘Lotus’ interchangeably for both teams.”

We hope this plays out with a clear winner on top, because what’s the plural of Lotus, anyway? Loti? Lotusesses?

Lotus impresario and well-coiffed CEO Dany Bahar has denied reports that he’s planning to divorce Lotus from its Malaysian parent company Proton—right after he mentioned that, well, he might.

During a recent interview, Bahar mentioned that he wanted to bring Lotus up to Porsche-killing standards, and in order to do so, he would have to leave Proton behind and shack up with a bigger sugar daddy, one capable of treating Lotus right. That company, he suggested, was Toyota: given Lotus’s now-tradition of using their engines, it only made sense.

But according to Bahar himself, “Proton has played, and continue to play, a crucial role in our development.” His vision for Lotus’s five-year plan includes Proton every step of the way, including Proton’s help in securing funding for Bahar’s next two-door/mid-engined/aluminum-spaceframe sedan/SUV/Cayman-killer GT/track-ready city car project.

“We have an incredibly strong relationship with Proton, they support us 100 per cent and frankly this is really important for a company like ours,” said Bahar.” Part of the business plan is the joint development of a global small car platform meaning that for the first time in the Proton Lotus history, the relationship will be mutually beneficial. This alone should demonstrate how close we are.”

Let’s hope that pre-nup’s still valid.

Lotus CEO Dany Bahar has made numerous changes to the storied British brand since he joined the company in 2009 and he’s not done yet. In a recent interview he made known his desire to see Lotus split off from its current Malaysian owner Proton, in search of a major global automaker – like Toyota.

According to Bahar, Lotus will need a partner in order to offset the cost of meeting strict new emissions ratings and crash tests. If a partner can’t be found, Lotus could look at spinning off into a private company with publicly traded stock.

Rumors of a tie-up with Toyota are only too easy to generate with both automakers sharing a long-term partnership, with Toyota supplying engines in cars like the Elise since 1994.

Bahar’s plan is to build up Lotus as a serious rival to Porsche, with total sales reaching anywhere from 6,000 to 8,000 units annually by around 2015. In order to achieve this significant growth Lotus has already unveiled its New Era plan to develop several new models including a new Elise, an Esprit and even a possible city car, among others.

According to a report by Inside Line, the company is developing a new aluminum tub to be shared across these models, which weights 220-lbs less than the 520 lb one used in the Evora.

[Source: InsideLine]

While the upcoming Lotus Esprit has been announced using a supercharged version of the Lexus IS-F’s 5.0-liter V8, that may all change when the new high-powered exotic comes to market in 2012.

Lotus CEO Dany Bahar, in an interview with AutoCar, commented that the storied British sports car maker is now examining the possibility of building its own V8. “The engine is the heart of a sports car; we should do our own product,” said Bahar.

One of the main factors in pushing Lotus towards this decision was customer feedback. “In the mind of sports-car enthusiasts, Toyota power might not be good enough,” he admitted.

Still, Lotus has yet to move ahead with a costly engine development program and won’t make any decision on if it will do so until January with Bahar commenting that the decision would be purely financial.

Recently Lotus announced it would run cars powered by its own engines in the 2012 Indy Car season, despite the fact that it currently does not build any of its own engines.

GALLERY: Lotus Esprit

[Source: AutoCar]

Lotus engineering chief Wolf Zimmerman also revealed that the planned three-strong family of mid-engined Lotuses that will start with the Esprit will share a common platform, brakes, suspension and electrical systems.