But the Elise did not debut until the end of March and won't reach full production for several more months. Playle said Lotus's contract with General Motors to build the Speedster had forced the company to behave more like a major manufacturer, adopting ISO 9000 quality measurements. Lotus is now truly a car manufacturer, albeit very small. Lotus, owned by Malaysian manufacturer Proton, spent 9.6 million euros to build three new production lines. That means we have to go to North America, Australia and so on.
Lotus can no longer make cars for just the UK and Europe.
It has to be worldwide. Playle said Lotus had previously planned to build just over 900 cars a year. Now the company plans to build 3,000 each of the Speedster and the Elise. In its 52-year history, Lotus has made 62,000 cars. This year alone, it expects to build 7,000 cars.