When is a Lotus not a Lotus? This is the question. Proton says that “there is and always has been only one Lotus, the Lotus started by Colin Chapman”.
This statement is incorrect in that there are an awful lot of companies called Lotus. Lotus Ltd, for example, makes clothing and footwear; there is a celebrated software company called Lotus, which is now owned by IBM; there is the Light Of Truth Universal Shrine, otherwise known as Lotus, and any number of Chinese restaurants with the same name.
What is true is that Lotus Engineering – the company from which Group Lotus grew – has its roots in racing. In 1948 Colin Chapman modified an Austin 7 into a trials car. This became known as the Lotus Mk1 and was successful enough for rival racers to ask Chapman to build them replicas of his car. The Lotus Engineering Company, which was not a limited liability company in those days, was formed on January 1 1952. It was incorporated as Lotus Engineering Company Limited on September 25 1952. It was a partnership between Chapman and Michael Allen, although the latter soon departed.
Two years after that Team Lotus was established as an independent enterprise, in order to protect the companies from each other’s financial problems. However the success of Lotus Engineering was such that four years later it was restructured as the Lotus Group of Companies, which included Lotus Components Ltd, which built customer competition cars including the Seven, in component form for the home market and fully built for export; Lotus Cars Ltd, which produced the Type 14 Elite and subsequent road cars; and Lotus Developments Ltd, which dealt with the design and development of new cars for the two manufacturing companies. Along the way various companies came and went. Production of the Lotus Seven was sold to Caterham Cars in 1973. Lotus Components Ltd became Lotus Racing Limited in 1971, but was subsequently closed down. The Griston engineering company took on most of the personnel to form Group Racing Developments (GRD) which aimed to compete with March and Brabham in the customer racing car market. This stopped its operations at the end of 1974.
Team Lotus did use Group Lotus engineers to help with some of its developments, notably active suspension.
The modern Lotus Engineering was not established until 1980.
In 1978 Group Lotus started a relationship with DeLorean, to build cars with funding from the British Government. The financial side of this business was murky, involving a Panama-registered company called General Products Development Services Inc. The car went on sale in January 1981 but Delorean went bankrupt in 1982. Investigations revealed that millions of pounds of British Government money disappeared. Colin Chapman died before this was all revealed but Lotus executive Fred Bushell did go to jail for his part in the affair.
After Chapman’s death in December 1982 Group Lotus ran into trouble. In July 1985 it became a public limited company (plc), which meant that shares could be traded on the stock exchange. The following year General Motors bought the company.
Team Lotus struggled on in the hands of the Chapman Family. In 1990 Peter Collins and Peter Wright, purchased the Team Lotus name and logo from the Chapman-owned Team Lotus International Ltd and ran an organisation called Team Lotus Ltd. This survived until 1994 when the money ran out and it went into administration. David Hunt purchased the rights to the name and logo from the administrator.
There is little doubt that while the team and the group were both owned by the Chapman Family until 1985, the two organisations have gone their separate ways in the last 25 years.
Proton is now claiming that Hunt’s attempt to acquire the name Team Lotus was ineffective and that Group Lotus is the owner of all rights in the “Lotus” automotive brand including those relating to Formula 1. It also says that Tony Fernandes and 1 Malaysia Racing Team recognised this by taking a licence from Group Lotus to use the “Lotus” brand for the “Lotus Racing” team. Group Lotus has now terminated its licence to 1 Malaysia Racing Team to use the “Lotus Racing” brand in the 2011 and future Formula 1 seasons as a result of what it calls “flagrant and persistent breaches of the licence”.
Fernandes’s Tune Group has now acquired the rights to the name “Team Lotus” from David Hunt. Group Lotus claims that these rights to have no proper legal foundation and claims that Fernandes was well aware of this when he bought them. Proton says it will support Group Lotus in taking all necessary steps to protect the rights it claims and says it will resist any attempts by Fernandes or his companies to use the Lotus name next year.
The three shareholders of Lotus Racing have issued proceedings in the English High Court for a declaration that Team Lotus Ventures has the rights to use the Team Lotus name and everything associated with that brand in relation to F1.
“Racing under the Team Lotus name from 2011 means our licence with Group Lotus has now come to an end,” says the team’s Chief Executive Officer Riad Asmat. “In reality, this has nothing to do with how we will go racing in 2011, as the ownership of Team Lotus has been clearly defined for many years. David was approached a number of times about selling the rights of Team Lotus Ventures, including one official offer of from Proton/Group Lotus themselves. That must have been tempting for David, as the rightful owner of the Team Lotus brand and its rights. Oddly enough, Group Lotus also recently tried to revoke the Team Lotus trademarks at a hearing at the Trade Mark Registry, but they were unsuccessful. I suspect David’s misgivings about their previous offer to buy were justified by that action.
“The licence debate really is a non-issue. It was a simple licence, attached to a one year sponsorship deal with Proton for 2010 alone, and in fact for a tiny proportion of the amount invested by the shareholders into the team – approximately 1.5% of the total budget. Unfortunately we never reached the point where we discussed extending that one year deal. When we signed our licence to compete as Lotus Racing with Group Lotus, they were very clear that we could not make any reference to Team Lotus as they had no rights at all to the Team Lotus name or its rights. In fact, in the licence agreement between 1Malaysia Racing and Group Lotus the use of the Team Lotus name is expressly prohibited as they had agreed contractually, as long ago as 1985, that they had not rights to use that name. That was obviously something we had enormous respect for, and made no attempt to change until we could do so rightfully, and with a very clear understanding of what we had acquired in Team Lotus Ventures.
“So now the licence we ran under this year has been withdrawn by Group Lotus, and while we accept that this obviously means we have reached the end of that chapter, it opens up a new and very exciting one for everyone in our team. There will have to be some discussions with Proton and Group Lotus about the entitlement to terminate the licence. Frankly, they are trying to say that some very trivial points, including t-shirt design approvals of all things, gave them the right to terminate, but we thoroughly reject this.
“The details of what has been going on behind the scenes are now coming to light, and that’s good because it means the shareholders of Proton, the government, will now know the truth of what has been going on. However the important thing is to look at what we are doing to guarantee future success. Personally I think it’s odd that our colleagues at Group Lotus have not embraced what we are giving them – a global platform for creating huge awareness and great value for their operations, all at no cost to them.”
What is very clear is that this is a battle of egos and that no-one gains from the current mess. Group Lotus this week wants the spotlight on the launch of its planned new $179,000 Elite coupé at the Salon de l’Automobile in Paris. This is an attempt, which some feel is ill-considered, to put Lotus into competition with super car companies like Ferrari, McLaren and Porsche. Traditionally, Lotus was aimed at a lower segment of the luxury market. The Exige, which is a derivative of the Elise, which dates from the 1990s, retails at up to $51,860. The new management is now selling the Evora which retails at $73,200 and is hoping that this will generate the revenues to enable the company to take on the big guns in 2014 (a long time from now), with the expensive Elite. Group Lotus has also declared its intention to try to sell F1-inspired cars called the 125, a racing car complete with 3.5 litre Cosworth V8 engine and a six-speed semi automatic gearbox with paddle shift and is even offering the car in “a stylization of a classic Lotus livery”.
The whole mess must be sorted out at political level in Malaysia, where one group is trying to show itself to be more powerful than another. One thing is very clear: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak will not be impressed by this. His 1 Malaysia concept of national unity is not working in this very high-profile case. Fernandes obviously buys into the idea, having named his team after it.
The folk at Proton do not seem to get it. Najib is their boss. Perhaps they should have a think about that…
joeblogsf1 
The rights to the name “Team Lotus” and the Team Lotus logo have already been established in the courts – the ruling is here : http://www.ipo.gov.uk/o21098.pdf
The only thing left to establish is whether Team Lotus is primarily involved in advertising or vehicle manufacture. If it’s advertising (i.e. through sponsorship deals) – Proton/Group Lotus’ claim will most likely fail again.
There are multiple cases regarding the registration of ‘Team Lotus’ trademark on file at the UK IPO web site.All are available online for your perusal. For me, the relevant case is:
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/tm/t-os/t-find/t-challenge-decision-results/t-challenge-decision-results-bl?BL_Number=O/147/03
read the Hearing Officer’s decision in the pdf file.
Proton/Group Lotus could have acquired the ‘Team Lotus’ trademark when they acquired the Lotus car operation, having discovered during their due diligence that David Hunt rightfully owned it. Instead, they are attempting to strong-arm Fernandes now that there is again equity in the brand.
Question is, will Malaysian courts accept and respect decisions reached in the UK when push-comes-to-shove between warring Malaysian interests.
Tony Fernandes can win the battle but still lose the war.
Hi Joe – it is all getting very interesting. Personally I recon the sooner they all get round the table and talk the better. Hopefully this is a strategy to give Tony Fernandes some increased bargaining power. I would think that all motor racing and car enthusiasts would like to see the two sides brought nearer together – something that was effectively lost back in December 1982. One thing confuses me a bit though. If I have read it right ‘Team Lotus International Ltd’ was sold to Peter Collins and Peter Wright and they then sold ‘Team Lotus Ltd’ to David Hunt and now Tony Fernandes has brought the rights to ‘Team Lotus Ventures’. Have there been registered name changes of what could then be seen as a continuing company? And will next year’s F1 car get a Lotus type number as this year’s T 127 did! I also share you apparent reservation about Lotus positioning itself too high up the sports car food chain. However the mid-engined Esprit arguably ended up as a viable Porsche/Ferrari alternative. I don’t get the T125 idea though. Time will tell I guess.
it is a shame that the “team lotus” name has ended up like this… becoming the trophy of a power play between the malaysians.
best to turn the current F1 team into “Fernandes-Gascoigne Racing” .. run with the same spirit of Chapman, Williams, Dennis, Tyrell etc.. because that is what these two men brought.
Fernandes would have to do everything (as David Hunt) to prevent Lotus Group to use the Team Lotus name and logo. Shame that the green and yellow colours cannot be “legally frozen”
one thing is becoming clear by this whole mess and analyzing it.. and that is that “Lotus Racing”… was never associate-able with “Team Lotus” as Fernandes himself wanted the public to believe…
so Joe, do you still stand by your “Lotus 500th GP” article? 🙂
jmv,
As I have said before. If the Chapman Family think that Tony Fernandes is the right man, then it IS Lotus. End of story.
I could not give a toss about Proton/Group Lotus. Who in their right mind puts a man with no experience running car companies in charge of a car company? It is suicidal.
please dont fight over Petes real Lotus… with Senna at the wheel, you will only be very annoyed
Alotus with A Renault engine is the new trye name of lotus, why? because in 2011 it will be competative, COSWORTH IS DEAD, admit it 2010 showed us the truth.
So if Proton/Group Lotus own ‘all rights in the “Lotus” automotive brand including those relating to Formula 1’ why did they explicitly tell Tony Fernandes they couldn’t license the name ‘Team Lotus’ to him and state they had no rights to it? Also why did they try to buy the rights to the name from David Hunt if his claim is supposedly invalid?
Great Post Joe,
Could be an interesting one to follow this. Proton are a curious case, they have led a sheltered existence under govenment control, which is perhaps why their product is lagging badly behind Asian upstarts Hyundai/Kia.
From all i’ve read of Fernandes, he seems to be smart enough to be in posission of the right brand to get him onto the grid as Team Lotus. I agree that you would think Group Lotus would be trying to perform a tie-up with Fernandes post-haste to use this great marketing plafrom, ready-made, for virtually nothing.
Big business works in strange ways!
Great read Joe. Your research skills and attention to detail are incredible!
I’m of the opinion that Asmat is correct in what he says in that, had Group Lotus owned the rights to the ‘Team Lotus’ brand and name, Tony Fernandes would have sought a license from them to use that name rather than ‘Lotus Racing’ as we see today.
He has already said that bringing back ‘Team Lotus’ was always his goal in the long run.
Still, if Group Lotus do win then Fernandes will have one hell of a paint job on his hands for his new plane!
I suppose this was inevitable once teams are able to buy history in this way. As soon as it becomes apparent how valuable the name is, other claimants will emerge.
I was just coming around to NuLotus being a good idea, then this situation just acts a reminder of how artificial it is.
Since the 2010 deal with Group Lotus prohibits the use of Team Lotus as a brand, doesn’t that prove that Group Lotus didn’t have the rights to Team Lotus.
So now in 2011, Fernandez has Team Lotus brand and Group Lotus don’t.
If Group Lotus claim to own the brand Team Lotus, why didn’t they allow Fernandez to use it this year? (2010)
John
What will happen is that over a period of time Fernandes will win his political battle in his homeland. And what will be the outcome? Well of course what he has wanted all along. He will be offered the chance to buy Group Lotus as a 1 Malaysia venture for a nominal fee of $1. He will then have a manufacturer and an F1 team with full family backing – which is of course the rightful way.
It is in someways almost just a pitch to which malaysian govt owned organisation should run the sports car brand – Proton or 1 Malaysia? Fernandes thinks he is the chosen one clearly. Fine.
Bahar had better be careful. He has a good reputation, but he might just find that his job disappears if he is too aggressive.
JMC
He has a good reputation?
I see that not only are Group Lotus sponsoring the ART GP3 and GP3 outfits, they’re expanding their Indycar sponsorship to two Kalkhoven cars next year and building bodywork for the new Indy spec in 2012, as well as building both GT2 and LMP2 cars for Lemans 2012. To say nothing of the possibility of purchasing Sauber, Toro Rosso, or HRT and trying to run in F1 as Team Lotus or their second choice, Team Tony Get Stuffed. And pouring millions of pounds into upgrading the Hethel test track and a bunch of other things.
All this is ridiculous, surely? It’s all very well to get into a micturition contest with Tony Fernandes over who owns the Lotus name, but all this “new Ferrari” stuff that Dany Bahar seems to have his heart set on can’t be feasible by any standards.
Even Ferrari themselves confine themselves to F1 and a few GT2 cars. Ron Dennis’s plan to turn McLaren into a new Ferrari is now in its 15th year or so, and is proceeding at a measured and presumably sustainable pace.
So where does Bahar think that he’s getting the money to do four times as much or more as the sport’s canniest and most successful operators? Proton is losing money, isn’t it?
Ownership of Team Lotus name seems clear… but who has the rights to the actual ACBC badge?
Great to have that lot clarified Joe.
I can’t believe Group Lotus are throwing their toys out of the pram for something as minor as t-shirt designs tho!
Btw, there’s more than just the Elite at Paris tho and I’m not just talking current models…
As far as I remember from my time studying law, name issues are more about ‘passing off’ than ownership, in order to preserve rights to a name over someone else with a possible claim you have to actually use that name in the area and jurisdiction you are seeking to occupy. For example Apple computer and apple corps (beatles) were fine until apple compute opened the itunes music store. The music that plays whenyou switch on a mac is called ‘sosusmi’ to highlight the tension between one firm moving into the other’s sector. So to preserve a trademark in the automotive sector worldwide you need to be active worldwide in the automotive sector. Tony F may have inadvertently helped group lotus to establish use of the lotus name in F1 at a time when team lotus were doing nothing with the name they feel they have a right to. Use it or lose it might be the issue here…
Hope they get the name. Failing that paint the cars black and gold and stick a barcode logo on them. Call it JPS racing.
Joe…
Very clear cut.. the bosses at proton would be well advised to back down before they get a bloodly nose…. Before it starts to cost them money
I like Chris D’s idea.
Still, it shows that the acronym still holds true:
Lots
Of
Trouble
Usually
Serious
Given past history, and legal decisions/precedent, it seems highly unlikely that Proton would win in court on this issue. Indeed. it would seem this whole affair will amount to a bit of chuckling by the presiding judge in the high court, a rapid dismissal (or at least a finding for Fernandes and Hunt), and Proton sent down the road kicking rocks — and hopefully paying to recompense the court’s time.
They know from past attempts who owns what, and it was never them, and who the Chapman family decided was the proper heir to Colin’s brand. That said, they seem to think there’s no harm in throwing mud, aspersions and grief at Fernandes, in a bad-spirited, and completely hopeless effort ti win in court what they couldn’t through normal channels. They must feel that even if they lose (and they will), the upside is a little boost in newsprint for their own new-car launches.
However the downside risk of generating damaging PR and a staining the Proton-owned Group Lotus brand is fairly obvious. That F1-esque consumer car in Team Lotus livery? Forget about it.
Lotus often used to be seen as an acronym :Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious based on the not-always-kind reputation for advanced design and lightness but poor reliability and perhaps safety. Now it seems that the name itself bears out the accuracy of the acronym!
A sorry state of affairs for ALL concerned.
Joe,
Well he did at Red Bull and Ferrari (have a good reputation.) His public image does seem to have changed now he is at Lotus. Perhaps the top job has all gone to his head? Oh well.
Still my money is on Fernandes being handed Group Lotus by the Malaysian govt in the future.
Of course this all boils down to money and I would imagine that Group Lotus and Proton are waiting for a decent offer for the company from Fernandes and in the meantime are day by day increasing their perceived value and goodwill by adding to their motorsport programme. Once the offer is correct from TF to Proton this will all blow away.
JMC
I should say good marketing and brand reputation anyway. At least Mateschitz like him?
I think that Bahar’s goal is to bankrupt Group Lotus and pick up the valuable pieces afterwards for his own benefit. No way that he can make Lotus profitable with his current plans. Elite is not going to be produced until 2014 and how is going to fund his new race ventures? Proton better watch out. They got a Trojan horse in the house!
I think this could be as much about securing merchandising rights than anything else. From what I’ve read Mr Bahar was formerly in charge of marketing and merchandising at Ferrari during its explosion of new products over the past few years.
There is an article accompanied by a Group Lotus picture on the Lotus Forums site saying a new ‘Lotus lifestyle’ clothing line is to be announced imminently. Perhaps this could in part be behind the statement from the renamed Team Lotus that this was about shirts…..
Does it REALLY make any difference to anything important? As vacuous and pointless as Ronald Mc’s “I’m lovin’ it” being a legally protected trademark.
“He has a good reputation?”
Heh! Former “Head of Brand” at Ferrari. As far as I can see, Ferrari has remained a powerful brand despite what’s been done to promote it over the last couple of decades, not because of it. Ferrari used to have style and class. Today it manages to look cheap and tacky while selling cars with six-figure price tags. “SF” logo baseball cap, anyone?
Good luck to Tony Fernandes. But here’s the thing: I don’t want Group Lotus to lose either. To me, the mad thing about all this is that GL has an amazing opportunity here to return to the glory days, to be what it once was, and should be, with almost no effort or outlay on its own part, yet it seems determined to stamp it out. Crazy.
Duncan Snowden,
He was not in that job for long
Yes, Joe. Fair enough. Once I saw what I wrote in black and white it did seem a bit harsh. True, though. 😉
@ Duncan
“GL has an amazing opportunity here to return to the glory days”…
But that’s just perception. Aside from the Clark years, all of Team Lotus’ glory days with Hill, Rindt, Fittipaldi, Andretti, Peterson, Senna etc were not part of Group Lotus.
I feel that I read somewher that the GL/TL split occured in the late sixties, and so the rest of Team Lotus has always been outside of GL. Not much glory for them.
At some stage after the sixties the company was listed on the Stock Exchange. It was certainly around on 31/3/1982 as it is give a value for CGT purposes of some 27p a share. There was a 1 for 1 rights issue for 40p in September 1983 and finally the company was taken over on 1 February 1986 by GMLG Ltd for 129.5p in cash. I can’t find trace of GMLG Ltd at Companies House, but it was probably an offshore takeover vehicle (ho ho) for GM.
In 1986 at the time of this takeover Team Lotus were still thriving as we know, and still winning GPs until 1987. So therefore high profile and not exactly hiding under the radar of GMs lawyers. GM being one of the largest companies on the planet would not be short of a bob or two if they felt that there was a case to challenge Team Lotus, but they didn’t.
No problem also when the company went to Bugatti before going to Proton. During the Proton years they seem to have known clearly that the name was not theirs. It’s only now under Bahar that they seem to have decided to use open bully tactics.
The only thing that I have learned recently is the need to be pro-active with your trademark/intellectual property rights. I can understand preventing someone from squatting on property and doing nothing with it, but 5 years seemed very tough. But at least Hunt was able to show why it was so hard to bring back Lotus to the fore and his case won. I thought that an interesting point was made above that perhaps Fernandez could have strengthened GL’s F1 case by asking them to use their Lotus name under Lotus Racing, but hopefully that will not be enough to undermine what should be a straightforward case of ownership.
There’s an interesting argument to be made (by someone with deep pockets) that GP2 and GP3 cars in green-and-yellow livery and bearing the Lotus name would actually constitute passing-off by Group Lotus — an attempt to take a free ride on the goodwill and brand identity that have been built up by Lotus Racing this year in F1, FR3.5, and British F3.
The argument would need to be made and an injunction obtained now, before any ART car is seen in public with a “Lotus” livery — but if successful it could shut Group Lotus out of using the “Lotus” name and livery on single-seaters.
Sports cars are a slightly different story — Lotus did race at Lemans in the 1990s, and it would be tough to argue that an Exige or an Elite is not a Group Lotus animal. And in America the precedent has already unfortunately been set by Takuma Sato’s car.
But depending on how pugnacious Tony Fernandes is feeling, it might be possible to establish all non-Indy single-seaters as Team Lotus territory.
BTW, “…involving a Panama-registered company called General Products Development Services Inc. ”
the company was GPD Services and it most certainly did not stand for General Products Development.
cvrt,
Tell me more…
I wonder whether the Ferrari management team at Group Lotus have with this kerfuffle launched a missile attack that was initially intended for Fernandes’ operation, but they’ve now realised that the coordinates were set wrong and the missile is now heading straight back towards them. Unfortunately for them, the missile is now out of range and can not be destroyed…
Bahar started a war that he had lost from the outset, having been allowed to do so by Proton, a company which has never seemed to have had any idea what Group Lotus actually is, let alone had any idea how to run the thing!
I can only hope that JMC is correct and someday we see Tony Fernandes at the helm of both Team Lotus and Group Lotus, but I suppose we’ll have to see whether the Malaysian government have the same vision.
For me the timing is a bit odd. Group Lotus plans to launch a new Lotus at Paris (which has been advertised for months) and Tony F decides less than a week before to announce the name change to Team Lotus. To me it looks like Tony trying to crash the party.
Personally I think this has all been caused by the GP2 fiasco. Next year having two teams in one championship calling them selves Lotus is not good for anyone. It looks like both sides are trying to create a new “Brand” of Lotus. Tony creating a single seater brand to help promote the F1 team and Danny creating a motorsports empire to help promote the Lotus road car business (like Colin did!!).
For me it’s a pure and simple turf war over who can use the 7 world championships as history in there press releases. It also allows both sides to publicly separate themselves from each other and for anyone interested to know exactly what each side does and allow no confusion. Tony does not buy into Danny’s dream of Lotus and vise versa and they both want a Lotus “Brand” with the history attached, this way they get to publicly divorce and advertise what each side is doing next allowing the interested to follow which brand they decide.
F1 still washes it’s baggage in public so why not Lotus, is there ever a thing as bad advertising, if there was Bernie would have put a muzzle on Montezemolo (but that does apear to have happened)?
It still amazes me how much support the f1 team is getting? Buy a name and suddenly a year later everyone seems to be backing your corner. Would it be the same story is Brabham had returned? Will it still be true in a few years when the whole team is run from Malaysia which is still the plan? Doesn’t sound very Lotus to me! at least Group Lotus is still based in Briton and looks like staying with investment in a new test track in Norfolk!!
Yeah, nice bit of research work there, Joe. What are Group Lotus thinking??? As Tony Fernandes says, they are missing a golden opportunity to advertise themselves, and for free. Ego does these things. Grow up.
As I read the IPO judgement, Team Lotus Ventures do not have the right to use the ACBC name and Team Lotus name with a logo that bore a striking resembalance to the ACBC Lotus logo, the ACBC and Lotus name on a badge being an integral part of the Lotus brand and the badge that appeared on the Team Lotus cars and indeed all of their single seater and motorsport cars. If that is the case, Team Lotus Ventures own in theory the Team Lotus name only, and not the ACBC logo in any form. I can see that Group Lotus commercial arguement as they feel that ths could have a negative impact with the ACBC brand and Lotus name particularily if this does not sit with their long term strategy.
Hindsight being a wonderful thing, this should have been clarified once and for all before the Lotus F1 Racing licence was granted.
For the general fan of Formula 1 it all looks mightly confusing especially when you start to look at the detail behind the story.
For all concerned, its a case of getting around the table, before the decision is made for all concerned by politicans who may or may not undertand what Lotus means to its fans whether of the cars or the racing side and do permanent damage commercially to both sides.
Deep down I do wish the revived Lotus presence in F1 has more of a ‘British feel’ to it than Malaysian but yes if Tony has the Chapman family’s tick of approval, I’m all for it, it’s Team Lotus to me.
JMC,
I used to work in Malaysia. No way that the Malaysian government would sell Proton/group Lotus to Tony fernandes for $1. Proton/ group lotus is not even in loss. So why would the government sell it? Proton is back in black since last year and it’s lotus group also was also making profit. tony f is an opportunist. the malaysian government won’t let Tony make Proton be like FAX(now MASwings). Tony F’s company still owes Malaysia Airports a large sum of money.
My money is on tony f losing and getting humiliated.
Tony F should have just focus on his crappy Airasia. too many delays, uncomfortable and too expansive to be a low cost airline!
Matt,
The government sold Air Asia to Tony for one ringgit. Perhaps the price will be higher with Lotus, but it is a deal that really makes sense. He knows what he is doing in business and has done a spectacular job in 12 months in F1. Whether you like the AirAsia service or not is really not the point, he has made a huge success of it, so an awful lost of people must like it and think it a worthwhile business. Proton has long been a financial disaster and the plans for Group Lotus seem to be very risky because the company is alienating its traditional customers and aiming for a market where standards are way higher and to which companies such as McLaren have been working towards for 15 years. If Bahar can do it in five they hats off to him. I think the whole thing will be bankrupted.
I m thinking, next year Tony 1World team?
I see a lot of speculations, so here is one more for you to think about.
Group Lotus wants to do more in various areas of motorsport.
Did anyone notice that Group Lotus and Toyota are getting closer and closer? Toyota has the experience and the knowledge to run a Formula One team. 1 + 1 = 2 …..
Could this be what Group Lotus wants?
lotuslover
Perhaps Bahar thinks he can built up Lotus and then sell it to Toyota. But that is a very long job from where he is now…
Hi Joe,
With all this talk going on about the ownership of Brand Lotus, is it possible that this entire feud has its roots to the profitablty of the F1 team. It is well known that Group Lotus and Proton made no money the last 2 years and are not doing that great this year either, while Lotus Racing stands to get atleast something more positive and could get more if historical value is paid by FOM for Team Lotus name.
–
Williamsf1
Wiliamsf1,
I think you are reading too much into it. Group Lotus has ambitions and a brash new management. They want to do as well as they can and believe that they can elbow Tony Fernandes out of the way. I think this is a major strategic error on their part and that they will pay for it with their jobs. But that is just my opinion. Fernandes has an impressive track record and is very well-connected. The Group Lotus people used to be employed in the Ferrari F1 team and are ambitious, but not very experienced in the automotive and political worlds.
What a mess and what shame. I wish the new Lotus F1 team well but am a little uneasy with the idea of the name simply being bestowed on a new start up team with money to spend. I am still a little confused about wether the new team has the right to claim the old ones historical achievements as their own. Are they now the 4th most successful constructor in F1? if they ever reach the top step of the podium will they celebrate their 1st win or their 80th? I suppose if there had been continuity and Fernendes had bought the team after it folded and started the first race in 95 noone would have questioned this.
Seems to me that if Proton didn’t want anybody to use the Team Lotus brand they should have bought the rights when they bought the road car company it’s a bit late to start whining now.
Exhaustive analysis as ever thankyou Joe, I see you mention Fred Bushell’s unfortunate stay at her Majesty’s pleasure. I seem to remember that the Judge at the time while sentencing Bushell to 5 years said that if Chapman had been alive he would have got 10!
Joe – on the whole Chapman/Lotus/DeLorean GPD saga, this BBC documentary shot I believe in the late 80s/early 90s explains it as well as you will hear anywhere else as accounts are given by Chapmans nearest and dearest at the time just before his passing –
The documentary is in 5 parts . . . . an absolutely fantastic watch:
Joe, Lotus are launching what promises to be an impressive array of future concepts at Paris – you might want to keep an eye on http://www.grouplotus.com/ for a live feed to the big event which in light of recent events and their own recent press release, is likely to play big on the ‘motorsports’ heritage of the company.
Much as I’d like an Exige or even one of the supposed hotted-up Lotus-Proton superminis presumed to be announced as a Lotus (to compete, oddly in light of their apparent Porsche/Ferrari aspirations, with the Mini Cooper S), I think I’d rather have a proper Lotus F1 team than what looks like being one enormous clusterf*ck.
Forza,
I don’t need to keep an eye on it, I will be there. I will let you know the level of clusterf*ckism going on…
I’ve just remembered that when I heard litespeed were going to do their bid for F1 as team lotus I thought it was laughable that they could claim the name without backing from lotus group.
Now at that point I had no insight into who owner what, but my gut feel was that for a lotus entry to be valid it needed the car company backing.
Tony F got that endorsement and I fully embraced the team. Since then I’ve been so impressed by the way they go racing and will support them whatever the name. However, I suppose i can only accept them as lotus now becase of a combination of the way they have worked this year AND the lotus group backing. Now they are legitimate I can say ‘woo team lotus is back’ and rationalise it. But no doubt group lotus backing helped me to accept them initially.
The real shame/missed opportunity here is the withdrawl of that backing.
Ash, I’d agree with you, BUT – TFs team this year was only in the green and yellow with a lotus name due to a license from group lotus.
My worry is that inadvertently TF and this years F1 team have established use by group lotus of the brand in F1.
At the same time the same group were putting the same logo and name on an indycar.
Meanwhile the team lotus brand and rights attached to it were pretty much dormant…
Stoozie: But that’s exactly my point. There is the chance for GL to support and benefit from the exposure generated by TL without any merger or buy-in.
PC: The two IPO judgements seem contradictory. The earlier one plainly comes down on the side of GL, yet the 2003 one (when GL applied for revocation) clearly starts from the position that TLV owns both the name and its version of the logo (regstration number 1338435). It looks to me as if something else remains to be dug up. Did TLV appeal the original decision and win?
Chris d: Exactly. It’s the volte-face that’s so maddening. Earlier this year GL seemed to understand how it could benefit from Fernandes. Now it appears that either it doesn’t, or there was an ulterior motive. Looking around the Interweb, there seems to be no love for TF among some of the Malaysian public, but I know who I’d trust more.
Glad to hear it young man.
joe,
yes the government sold AirAsia to Tony for one ringgit. but it was back then when low cost airlines was not profitable to run in southeast asia and the low cost airlines started to boom and have demand few years after the takeover. I don’t see any sense why would the government want to sell it to TF, Naza tried and failed. The government would prefer to sell Proton to toyota than TF. Yes TF knows what he is doing in business and has done a spectacular job in 12 months in F1 but it’s not a one man job. TF have a good reputation among corporate sector friends but not among Malaysian because of his dirty business tactics. The reason why Airasia was a huge success is there is no other so called “low cost airlines”(it’s expensive to be call low cost) in southeast asia except firefly and garuda airways which both are very small airline company that flies to only few destinations. People take Airasia just because they don’t have any other choice and definitely would not want to spend much to take MAS or SIA. If only Ryan Air or easy jet are available in southeast asia…
I’m not sure about you, but as person that has been working in Malaysia for almost 6years until last year. I do see Proton is stepping up their game for the past few years and imho McLaren had only step up their game few years ago after years of going slow and doing most car development with Mercedes.
Lotus would not dare to show 6 concept cars without not doing any homework on possible market and demand.
We’ll see in few years time. I put my money on Proton making more profit next year and Lotus gaining more market share of sports car sales. 🙂
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