http://www.mariantic.co.uk/lmp/images/lotuslmp2.jpg

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/87050

Nice, but I don't really understand Lotus's sudden international motor racing crusade. How does being involved in Le Mans, GP2, GP3 and IndyCar help them to sell cars?

Lotus haven't been interested in international motorsport for years, yet the company has been very successful. In fact, what revived Lotus was the original Elise in 1996.

Its like someone at Lotus has said: "Ah, we need to be in every type of motorsport that exists!"

Added to the fact that Lotus have decided that launching Porsche and Aston-Martin rivalling cars is a good idea, the company is going through an uncertain and odd period.

That’s not true, Porsche were seriously struggling in the early 1990’s until they released the Boxster which was a huge success for the marque. The 4x4 Cayenne has also been a success – product expansion is what has truly revived Porsche. Although I don’t doubt that Motorsport is a big business for Porsche.

The man who is now in charged of Lotus used to work for Ferrari as Marketing Director, so he has got a lot of credibility. But I fear that Lotus’s plans are too ambitious and because they are a small company, they cannot afford for their product strategy to go wrong.

GT3 and GT4 cars can be sold to customers, so that makes sense – I guess BMW is doing that with the Z4 and Mercedes with the SLS. But the LMP2 project seems pointless as Lotus won’t gain anything like the exposure they would receive if they won Le Mans outright – now that would be positive for the brand. If Lotus want to establish themselves with the truly best car makers, which they intend to do with Porsche and Aston-Martin priced road cars – then beating them all is a more useful goal.

Maybe building an LMP1 car and ditching all the other racing categories could be good…

Yes, Lotus F1 doesn’t have anything to do with the actual Lotus Group.