Lotus Cars sold more cars in 2021 it has in the last decade with old products going out of production forever.
2021 was a great sales year for Lotus Cars. The brand has been struggling under Proton ownership, but with Geely at the helm, the future looks promising. Last year, they said goodbye to the last of their legacy models, the Elise, Exige and Exora. While these were all ageing products, they were all ‘Final Edition’ products, and so many had an incentive to buy them. Lotus has shown that they’re not going to make the same raw, lightweight performance cars as before, instead, pivoting towards heavier, more complex vehicles like the Evija and Emira as well as an upcoming SUV.
For 2021, Lotus Cars sold 1,710 new cars, 24% more than they did in 2020 and the highest figure for the company since 2011. Their best-performing markets were the USA, Japan and the UK in first, second and third place. Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Belgium, Switzerland, and China made up the rest of their top ten list.
Here’s the press release with more.
PRESS RELEASE
Lotus has revealed its best annual global retail sales performance since 2011. The outstanding figures prove worldwide excitement about the brand’s transformation is translating into customers buying cars.
Retailers sold 1,710 new cars in 2021, the year the iconic Elise, Exige and Evora ended production. That compares with 1,378 sales in 2020, an increase of 24%. The Elise was the global top-seller as fans sought to secure a piece of automotive history via the highly specced Sport 240 Final Edition and the Cup 250 Final Edition models.
Sales performance was impressive across the globe. In Europe, the UK was up 29%, with Belgium the star performer up 37%. North American retailers covering USA and Canada were up 111% year-on-year, which was also their best performance in 10 years.
Records were broken in the Asia-Pacific region, where Japan had its best year since 2015, Australia since 2018 and Hong Kong since 2014. Qatar, which has been selling Lotus since 2016, had its best year ever. Further evidence of the ongoing transformation of the business came in Bahrain, Thailand and New Zealand, where Lotus sold its first new cars for at least seven years.
