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Staying true to its pillars: a new Lotus is formed

27 January, 2015

In a time where many automakers are struggling Lotus Cars are bucking the trend. They’ve recently announced that their overall sales are up by 54 per cent in the past nine months. In terms of volume, this is an increase of 551 cars on the prior year bringing sales to a total of 1565 cars.

Clearly Lotus Cars’ new strategy is working, with 25 new dealers added over the past nine months and a further 50 to join by the end of 2015. Lotus’ CEO, Jean-Marc Gales, said, “The positive reception that all our new Lotus cars are receiving in both new and established markets shows that our product development strategy is heading in the right direction.”

Lotus are set to reveal a new car at the Geneva International Motor Show in early March, 2015, said to remain true to Lotus’ core pillars of lightness, performance, and driving purity. The demand for Lotus’ cars is still rising in China and Japan, and a new model is speculated to considerably accelerate sales in the USA, Europe, Middle East, and Asia.

 

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

21 March, 2025

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.

Lancia Stratos – building a winner

12 March, 2025

On his own, and later with his wife Suzie, Craig Tickle has built and raced many rally cars. Starting in 1988, Craig went half shares in a Mk1 Escort and took it rallying. Apart from a few years in the US studying how to be a nuclear engineer, he has always had a rally car in the garage. When he is not playing with cars, he works as an engineer for his design consulting company.
Naturally, anybody interested in rallying has heard of the Lancia Stratos, the poster child and winner of the World Rally circuit in 1974, ’75, and ’76. Just as the Lamborghini Countach rebranded the world of supercars, so, too, did the Lancia Stratos when it came to getting down and dirty in the rally world.