The piece of news was about something else, but I noticed something strange…
The possible change of owner is bound to create uncertainty at Lotus, which has just embarked on a 10-year plan to transform its prospects and make it financially self-supporting.
Last year, more than 200 people were made redundant in the firm’s engineering division after the loss of a major contract to design a new engine range for Proton.
The engineering division has now been reorganised to focus on winning more smaller contracts. In the past few months it has succeeded in winning more than 50 new projects with more than 30 customers.
What is this new Proton engine range, and how come Proton did not want to use Lotus expertise to help with it?
I looked up the internet for more information and found this.
Two engineers made redundant by Group Lotus are looking to put their skills to good use after establishing a specialist engineering consultancy.
Paul Spinks and Kevin Whitefield were among more than 200 people made redundant by the Hethel-based car maker following the decision by parent company Proton to cancel a major project.
So now we know the new engine range project was cancelled. What was this engine range? Was it supposed to go into the Savvy? Did cancelling it result in Renault engines to be used instead? Or was it another totally unrelated new engine range? Nobody knows.
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no one know what proton thinking, no one know what proton doing… we only can watch show what going to happen on them… haha…
Could Proton have finally realised that engine manufacturing is a big volume business? More Renault engines in Protons?
Isn't it more likely that the contract to develop the campro engine ended?
qlp: The context of the article seems to mean that they lost the bid for a new contract. Not sure lah.
Or maybe the engineers become TOO intelligent to listen to anyone for more feasible ideas????
First of all, thx for ur visiting to my blog. Anyway you are the great guru of blog to me, haha….
I feel that Proton face a lot of problem in the management side especially R&D in new technology. Don't you find that Proton technology is far lack behind and they rarely announce their future roadmap. Roadmap is an important path to strengthen the confident of buyers. Even through they annouce the launch of Savvy and Satria Replacement Model, but it delay the launch date.
To achieve the status of world class car maker, proton need to start with the quality and management. So, now proton do start with the quality…… but how about management side…… and do it too late to take action on the quality improvement for their products?????
I had my proton gen2 car…………. if you ask me what my comments, i do say…. i respect the design and development team for such a good looking and great effort to design such a good car… but….i do not satisfy with the car i got….. because a lot of issue and problem!!!
It's not the campro engine. This one is another range of proton's next generation engine. At first, they want to use campro in Savvy but the engine bay design doesn't allow this (size problem) so they use renault's due to their previous renault's 1.8l engine in waja experience. Campro engine can be easily converted to 1.3, 1.6, 1.8 variant. That's why proton opt for campro. Still, the cam profiling is not in yet.
but Lotus isn't famous for making engine.
Dont be a fool la mutant tomato… dont you think it is not a good bussiness move to design a new engine when you can have it off the shelves (from your parent company a.k.a. VW)? and cheaper? and when break even of cost is when 400,000 units of it is built? we are not talking plastic injection parts, or slush moulding parts, or simple resin parts. We are talking casting here. Damn expensive. Why dont they made their own gearbox? why most manufacturer bought their gearbox from ZF? er, Paul, could you ask your ‘little bird’ is this the NEF engines that Lotus share with (Large) Proton? its top secret and I’ll chiow …..
I don't understand something… If the stupid bastards at Proton never intended to use the expertise and technical know-how of Lotus for GOOD things like developing engines, then why did they buy Lotus in the first place? Just so that they could put a little metal plaque at ther back of some cars saying "tuned by Lotus" ?
Grrrrrreat move Proton….viva boleh-land…… :|
the weird thing bout proton is why they designed the savvy not to fit their 1.3L campro engine.. swtz.
sekot: gearboxes require economies of scale much much more larger than engines. even BMW does not manufacture it's own SMG gearbox.
Oh, Paul. I'm trying to be more sarcarstic here to ask the car manufacturer to built their own tranny. Anyway, keep up the good work. Nice blog mate.
xyz said,
July 30, 2005 @ 11:29 pm
but Lotus isn’t famous for making engine.
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Lotus is an engineering consultant, i.e. they never get the credits of designing anything.
Example:
GM asked Lotus to design an engine for them a few years back, the L850 engine. And also this engine has been made into a number of variants. Currently, this engine and it's variants are being made every 2 seconds worldwide, because it was that good. Every 2 seconds!! but since GM paid for everything, they own the IP. So why should GM let Lotus get any credits for this engineering masterpiece?
buy lotus ?ha.. ha. i toad why proton buy London.
lotus Mosley do a performance car for there national trad mark.
do u think there really interested in conventional car? my b yes for them to test ground ha…
hai.. wonder y proton acquired lotus in the first place if we dont exploit their technology! proton has the technology at its command yet it refuses to use it! I assume that when proton acquired lotus, the quality of proton cars would improve. clearly, its not happening!
Well in term of handling, proton did gain sumthing. coz lotus is considered to be among the world best in car handling. Lotus even design the top gear test track to test the handling of a car. In term of handling, proton is getting better after buying lotus. But still interior quality is proton main problems. Like james said in top gear when he was testing gen2 " i prefer a toyota developed interior than lotus developed handling "
all because of the TDM's sight la .
they just want to push the M race up , then uses the M as an excuse for the suppliers and they go on to their masterminded punya company …
summore proton is damn serious into debt … how ?
ask u la ..how ?
ok , the workers in proton are mixed . but the suppliers ..nope .
this article probably refers to another engine range. i read somewhere tht proton is developing another family of engines which will start from 2.5 lt V6 to nearly 4.0 lt V8. maybe they dont want this engine family anymore
dun say engine lah, they should look into the power windows issue first.
the Gen2 and Savvy is still having power window problem. 20 years already also cannot fix.. how can??
Why would Lotus have any involvement in Proton engines? hello %#%$!^
Even the lotus elise 2.0 engine is sourced from toyota.