A British sports car maker founded by Colin Chapman, building cars at its Hethel site in Norfolk on a former RAF airfield.
Lotus Cars is a British sports car maker based at Hethel in Norfolk, near Wymondham and about ten miles south of Norwich. Its current road cars include the Emira, a petrol sports car, the Evija, an electric hypercar, and the Eletre, an electric SUV. Lotus Engineering also works for other manufacturers, especially on suspension.
Colin Chapman founded the Lotus Engineering Company on 1 January 1952, working first from old stables behind his father's pub, the Railway Hotel in Hornsey, north London. The company moved to Cheshunt in Hertfordshire in 1959 and then to Hethel in 1966. Chapman chose Hethel after flying in to the closed RAF base, which had runways and buildings suited to development and testing. We did not find a current written mission statement for Lotus.
Hethel is still the centre of Lotus sports car work. Half of each runway became a test track, and today's circuit is 2.2 miles long with an FIA-approved surface. In 2000 Lotus built its headquarters there, and later building work added an Evija assembly hall and a new sports car factory. Lotus Engineering is based at the Lotus Advanced Technology Centre at the University of Warwick's Wellesbourne campus. Geely has controlled Lotus since 2017, and said that Hethel will remain the "spiritual home of Lotus".
Lotus employed 1,385 people in 2021 and 1,345 people in the UK at the end of 2019, up 35% on the year before. Team Lotus raced in Formula One from 1958 to 1994, and the page says Lotus won seven F1 world championships. The nearby Ketteringham Hall was Team Lotus's base from the mid-1970s to 1994. The site also has an old gym and chapel from its time as an RAF airfield, now housing a museum for the 389th Bombardment Group. The airbase was built in 1942 and used by American B-24 Liberator bomber groups, closed in 1948 and was sold to Lotus in 1966, and the first all-new car built at Hethel was the Europa. The 2000 headquarters and new assembly line produced the Elise, the Exige and the Vauxhall VX220.
Roles in this kind of company include vehicle dynamics, powertrain and electrical engineering, design, manufacturing, testing and consultancy. Lotus Cars' own site and its Lotus story pages are the best place to find out more about the company's heritage and current work.
Website: www.lotuscars.com
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