Lotus SUV to be built in China

Lotus is known for building sports cars, then replacing them about every 15 years or just promising to replace them and never getting around to it.

It’s also known for a slavish devotion to light weight, with its founder famously demanding that every part on his cars should do at least two jobs and do them lighter than was often advisable in the real world.

But now reports in Britain’s AutoExpress insist that Lotus will build an SUV and, even though it resisted Asian construction even when it was owned by Proton, that it will build it in China.

Due on sale in 2019, the new SUV will be designed to match up to the Porsche Macan, Audi SQ5 and warmed up versions of the BMW X4 'coupe'.

So far, the Brits insist, the new Lotus SUV will be sold only in China, though it might move into wider markets if it’s deemed a success. And if it can be engineered to meet European and American standards of crossover goodness.

But while Lotus has been neglecting its core sports car business somewhat (OK, a lot) as it takes the world’s longest reset from the Dany Bahar dark days, it needs cash and that’s what a crossover SUV is calculated to bring.

Lotus’s parent company, Malaysia’s DRB-Hicom, has already signed up to a joint-venture agreement (the precursor of anything being built in China) with Goldstar Heavy Industrial.

Though Lotus has no history of SUV production, it did show the APX concept at the 2006 Geneva motor show. That car used a supercharged 3.0-litre V6 to deliver 224kW of power and 360Nm of torque and got itself to 245km/h. Or so the press kit said.

It then showed an all-electric version of the APX at another show in 2007 that had an even higher top speed and was faster in acceleration, too. Again, allegedly.

But that was a full generation ago in car industry life cycles, and a Lotus SUV today would almost certainly shy away from bonded aluminium architectures and borrow something front-engined from previous parent company, Proton. So don’t expect it to be terribly light.

Actually, you could expect it to be both the heaviest Lotus production car ever built, as well as the tallest.

On the upside, it did show its 3-Eleven track-pack sports car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on the weekend. The 3-Eleven was supposed to make a more glamorous entrance on the back of a new production car lap record at the Nurburgring, but the circuit’s new speed limits forced Lotus to cancel the attempt.