What's really behind the Lotus announcements? And could the Elise be trying to take on the GT-R?

Do you remember when the Ford Focus was introduced? I do. Well, I remember Jeremy Clarkson standing in the waterfilled display stand stating how this made every other car in its class obsolete. This was off the back of the disappointing Escort and the utterly loathed Scorpio.

The Focus picked up where the KA had started, with new funky styling, a renewed interest in the driving experience, and was then followed by the rest of the Ford range.

A company like Ford, entrenched in model cycles and depreciating tooling, can't rip up the showroom brochure and start again, but that's exactly what Lotus are trying to do.

At the Paris motor show - as outlined by us here - Lotus have announced a new five year road map of new models. They've committed to five years of development, production costs, and the gamble of building a fleet of new models in unprecedented volumes for a niche manufacturer from Hethel. Proton have pumped a lot of cash into Lotus and have experience (as well as buying power) in car production, but they don't have a prestige dealer network to tap into. They also don't have a customer base who fit into the Porsche/Ferrari demographic. Lotus buyers like a stripped-back, involving driving experience.

Then there's the question of what Lotus actually are. They were the traditional garagistas, building racing cars and road cars in a Norfolk shed. As the road car side boomed, and then busted, the racing efforts slid until the team whimpered out of F1 as a backmarker team whose greatest modern achievement was launching Mika Hakkinen and Johnnie Herbert onto greater things. The road car company gambled on technology, on light weight, and built a reputation on the Elise. The Exige has raced all over the world, and gave us the beautifully bonkers 2-Eleven. They're also an automotive Skunkworks. The company who take troubled prototypes from many manufacturers and turn them into decent road cars. Between road car production, racing, car development and working on future tech R&D, they're probably the company that Prodrive wish they were.

And yet, the Paris announcement seems to be entirely based on moving the brand upmarket. To bring an end to the garagistas, and to turn Lotus into another Porsche. The Exige quietly dropped, the 2-Eleven only appears to be available in racing spec, and the Elise has gained DPM.

What's DPM? Dynamic Performance Management. From next year, the Elise, which originally featured nothing more fancy than ABS, will include:

• Hydraulic Brake Assist – like Merc's emergency stop system.
• Electronic Brake Distribution – auto shifting of brake balance if the ABS is about to cut in.
• Electronic Differential Lock – techno LSD.
• Cornering Brake Control – is there to help when the car is heavily loaded at the front under partial braking and oversteer comes into play. The system will reduce brake pressure on an inside wheel or increase the braking pressure on the outside front wheel before the car becomes out of shape.
• Drag Torque Control – Too fast off the throttle or a snatched downshift can lead to the engine braking the wheels too quickly causing slip or oversteer if cornering. This system will apply partial throttle to ensure stability.
• Anti-Lock Braking – No suprise there.
• Traction Control System – Again, nothing new.
• Vehicle Dynamic Control – will apply subtle brake pressure at the required wheel when the car becomes unstable.

So why the move into this new market? Why the big reveal? Why shun a lot of your existing customer base? The new management at Lotus are trying to sell the company. They're not really trying to sell it to you or I, but to the trade, to big dealer chains, maybe to someone looking to take it off Proton's hands. They're trying to show how they're a good long-term bet, getting all of the glittery tech front and centre. They're gambling the whole company on the hope that an ex-Ferrari man can take Lotus into Ferrari territory.

Oh, and they're opening a brand store in London.

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