Lotus currently has no long term strategy, virtually no money, and about $400 million in assorted liabilities. Aston Martin, while doing fairly well, creates cars that could use a bit of tuning, and has to resort to things like the Cygnet to keep its Corporate Average Fuel Economy scores at a reasonable level. As the two companies operate in entirely different price ranges, they wouldn't be stepping on each other's toes either.
While it would cost an estimated $1.1 to $1.6 Billion to merge the companies, and there would be no platform sharing that could be done initially we can see a whole list of perks that could come out of a venture like this.
- Aston Martin's cars would have Lotus tuned suspension, making them track-demons as well as awesome grand tourers.
- They could develop a scalable engine that could go into cars with cylinder counts from four to 12. Both companies could use an in-house engine.
- Lotus' cars get rather good fuel economy ratings, so the combined CAFE score would be reasonable.
- Tech sharing between Aston's GT racing programs and Lotus' F1 program would benefit both road and race cars.
- The Evora platform has proven to be very versatile; perhaps a stretched version could underpin a new Vantage.
- The Cygnet could meet the fiery death that it deserves.
Now we just have to wait and see if it happens.
Related: If We Were the Boss: Lotus Cars
[via Automobile]
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