Group Lotus has just appointed Russell Carr as its new head of design, replacing the outbound Donato Coco (best known for designing the ill-fated five Lotus concepts). Carr isn’t new to the company, of course, as he had held the same position long ago before ex-CEO Dany Bahar brought in Coco, his old colleague from Ferrari.
The main hand behind the Lotus Evora (pictured above), Carr has been in the Lotus family since 1990. Under the leadership of new CEO Jean-Marc Gales, the Briton will likely oversee a major update for the ageing Evora as well as the planned Lotus SUV and sedan, which could share tech with Proton.
Recently, the Malaysian-owned company hired former Kia Europe executive Jean-Charles Lievens to develop the brand’s sales network in Europe and ex-Millbrook Proving Ground boss Miguel Fragoso as engineering director. The plan is to turn Lotus into a “leaner, more competitive organisation,” as part of its latest restructuring programme.
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Wish they could bring in Daniel Simon as creative consultan or something. He did help Lotus with their beautiful motorcycle.
at first glance i thought it was russell crowe!(the name, not the pic!)
Russel Carr is good in technical & engineering but when come to designing a car, he absolutely failed. Have seen his works on Evora & ill fated Europa, with bad design.
While, Donato Coco has re-designing Elise & Exige models, thus contributed high volume of sales, even though without exclusion of North America market…
Typical Malaysian management company, good people can not stay long.
It’s about time that Lotus should carry out a big makeover on their current sportscar products line up. The chassis construction should’nt need much re-design as the cars already handle very well.It’s just Lotus needs to re-design the bodywork styling of their cars with a more fresh elements/lines.The interior also need to redesigned with more stylish & luxurious elements and perhaps Lotus should look into automated-types of gearbox for their cars to keep up with the current standards for sportscars.Only then can Lotus attract more (ever demanding) customers out there. In addition, it’s still puzzling why Lotus does’nt come out with a model that emulates the successful formula of the Mazda MX-5, a model which ironically inspired by small 2-seater sportscars from British marques of the 1960s/70s that include Lotus!
Donato Coco has done well redesign bodywork styling of Exige & Elise but not Evora, I doubt Rusell Carr can do it.
Btw, on automatic transmission, Lotus just annouced it.
What Lotus needs is a proper sportscar which doesn’t need an advanced yoga practitioner to get in and out off. They need a new line of Lotus for that.
pity….donato’s next gen lotus design was superbb… is chief technical wolfgang zimmerman still with lotus?
Nope, Wolfgang follow Danny Bahar, setup new boutique engineering company..