Goodbye Dany Bahar

[FW17]

Dany Bahar, the CEO who brought Lotus Cars back to F1 as a sponsor of the Lotus F1 team, has been suspended by the new owner of the parent company DRB-Hicom, it was confirmed today.

The suspension relates to Bahar’s “conduct” but no further details have been forthcoming at this stage.

Bahar came to prominence as Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz’s right hand man, with responsibility for the racing programme and marketing. He then went to Ferrari as head of brand, before joining Lotus just after they had struck a licence deal with Tony Fernandes for the 1 Malaysia team to be called Lotus. This led to a battle which was only resolved last year, with Fernandes ceding the Lotus name and Bahar bringing it to F1 first as sponsor of the team and then in 2012 as the chassis name. However the relationship between Lotus Cars and the F1 team has been downscaled recently.

Bahar had an ambitious plan to build a range of Lotus sports cars in Norfolk, funded by Proton, but now the new owner of Proton, DRB-Hicom, has suspended him,

“Group Lotus plc (“Lotus”) can today confirm that, following an operational review, chief executive Dany Bahar has been temporarily suspended from his role to facilitate an investigation into a complaint about his conduct made by Lotus’ penultimate parent company, DRB-Hicom Berhad,” a DRB Hicom statement said.

“The penultimate holding company would like to stress it is business as usual at Lotus. We fully support the company and will continue to support Lotus in its business endeavours and development.”

There has been no reaction as yet from the Lotus F1 team.

Bahar was due to be at a presentation of luxury apparel brand Lotus Originals in Monaco this evening, and was scheduled to make a speech at the event.

[mx_tifoso]

I'm glad he left Ferrari when he did, this guy never gave me a good feeling. He poached a lot of others from there too. Have fun in the sinking ship!

[flyboy2160]

....this guy never gave me a good feeling....Have fun in the sinking ship!

i agree, but my opinion is based on just a couple of his pie-in-the-sky announcements/interviews and on his gibberish altercation with jalopnik.

i never understood his reasoning about 'expanding' lotus. was he going to grow the market? did he really expect to take market share from porsche and from bmw?

i wonder what will happen to his new all-steel models? i just hope they (lotus) survive long enough for me to get one of the current composite bodied elises.....

[zyphro]

Good riddance!

[Nando]

I wonder what he did to get fired... I think what he wanted to do for Lotus was fantastic, new cars looked fantastic.

The goal of closing the gap between Lotus and bigger brands but with their own twist and of course, lightness.

[FW17]

Maybe Adam Parr with his awesome organizational skills can help Lotus out of this

[waynes]

good call, Adam Parr would be excellent

[tomislavp4]

What took them so long?

Something needs to be done to make Lotus profitable, that´s for sure, however, in my opinion his bunch-of-fat-models-expansion-plan isn´t the right thing to do and will never work.

First of all, you don´t mess with the Elise. The 2012 Elise not an Elise at all: it´s much heavier, it isn´t a roadster and it looks like a Playstation. The sweeping curves are gone, the side-intakes are gone, the radiator exits at the front are gone...

The new Esprit isn´t bad and it could compete with the R8´s and Gallardos, however the in-house developed engine is too expensive for them.

The Eterne is a joke. What´s the plan behind it? Build a Panamera-wanabee and take Porsche´s sales? Really?

I hope whoever replaces Dany knows what he´s doing

[marcush.]

to be realistic...not even Mercedes AMG can hold a candle against Porsche in that segment (yet) and they pretty much realised the SLS needs a bit more to reach the level of Porsche .
comparing this to anything ever build by Lotus is rather impossible as it simply is not the same.The level of development and validation is just world apart obviously and Mclaren has to learn these day just how many working hours are needed to tick off ALL the boxes and even think about being a serious threat .
The Elise is one hell of a driving experience ,but that´s about it..Trying to build a Porsche like Lotus product is going to be not much cheaper but a lot less geled ...and that´s unaacceptable to todays buyers.

[thearmofbarlow]

What took them so long?

Something needs to be done to make Lotus profitable, that´s for sure, however, in my opinion his bunch-of-fat-models-expansion-plan isn´t the right thing to do and will never work.

First of all, you don´t mess with the Elise. The 2012 Elise not an Elise at all: it´s much heavier, it isn´t a roadster and it looks like a Playstation. The sweeping curves are gone, the side-intakes are gone, the radiator exits at the front are gone...

The new Esprit isn´t bad and it could compete with the R8´s and Gallardos, however the in-house developed engine is too expensive for them.

The Eterne is a joke. What´s the plan behind it? Build a Panamera-wanabee and take Porsche´s sales? Really?

I hope whoever replaces Dany knows what he´s doing

Aston. They're targeting Aston. At a price point some $80,000 lower than the Rapide.