The Brits love their handling, and doesn’t Geely know it. The Chinese giant is going to enter the UK in the fourth quarter of this year with the EX5 (or Galaxy E5 or Proton eMas 7 depending on where you’re from), and the EV SUV may get Lotus-tuned handling thanks to a collaboration with Lotus Engineering, reports various British publications including Car Magazine and Top Gear.
“We know the Geely EX5 is a great product with several core features that will appeal to a British audience. That’s why we chose it to be our first passenger car for sale in the UK. However, we’re aware that UK customers have unique demands,” said Geely Auto UK boss Mike Yang.
“For that reason, before we release the car for sale, we’re working with the experts at Lotus Engineering to make sure we have a car that’s in line with expectations. Lotus Engineering has a formidable track record along with some of the best R&D resources, so we’re delighted to be working closely with them.”
Lotus Engineering is a division within Lotus that provides engineering and consultancy services to other automotive manufacturers to carry out engineering work including suspension and handling tuning – think Isuzu Piazza, Lotus Cortina and Lotus Carlton/Omega, besides the string of Protons we grew up with. Proton owned Lotus from 1996 to 2017.
This Euro NCAP, ANCAP and ASEAN NCAP five-star EV SUV (no matter what name it goes by) was apparently co-developed with Proton. Geely said last year that global-market models will use Proton-tuned suspension, but it was reported earlier this year that Australia would get its own tuning – and now, Britain.
UK specs are not known yet, but they shouldn’t differ much from the rest of the world. In Thailand, the range-topping EX5 Max just had its price cut to 899k baht (RM117k) after a series of reductions from the original 989k baht (RM129k). Proton recently said it won’t be joining the price war in Malaysia in a bid to protect resale values – even though it arguably started the war in the first place by significantly undercutting the BYD Atto 3. It has, however, decided to make the RM4,000 ‘early bird discount’ permanent.
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kene scam dah
i have faith in our Proton ability to tune to Lotus handling if there is sufficient design space for it!!
Actually Proton tuned suspension has been quite good for our non flat/bumpy roads when comparing to Geely tuned in China only for their roads.
Well “Lotus handling” do sound better if compared to “tuned by Proton” but bet the real world performance will be really minimal.