Lotus special edition pay off?

[dakazman]

http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2017/08/all-those-special-edition-lotus-models-have-paid-off.html

Dakazman

[4129R]

Does this mean the suppliers of parts will now get paid?

Last time I was at the factory, there were many Elise cars parked fully assembled, but without headlights, because the supplier had refused to deliver due to non-payment.

All payments come from Malaysia, so chasing payment is very difficult.

[Bainford]

This is very good news, considering a very few years ago I was pretty sure the company was in the hopper.

[BDA]

Lotus seem to go from just scraping by to losing money pretty regularly. Reading Dave Bean's story of his history, this played a big part of his success. There were Lotus dealers selling cars and then going under. He would buy their parts inventory at ridiculous prices and sold them to the owners. I don't know how many Lotus dealers in the US have been dealers for more than ten years but I suspect there aren't many.

[4129R]

I was told by my very close neighbour, who used to work in a very large scrap metal yard, that the wastage from the Lotus factory would make you cry.

They had to put all sorts of stuff into the metal fragmentation machine, and take photos of it all being shredded.

The scrap yard is only about a 15 minute drive from my house. It uses various techniques to separate the aluminium, steel etc. I wonder what it does with the fibreglass. I tried burning some badly damaged fibreglass clams, and the black smoke was horrendous. All the fibres were left with all the resin burning ferociously.

[BDA]

Ask Niki Lauda about burning fiberglass resin.

[dakazman]

Yes ,not pretty ! And the smell is pungent.
Dakazman