NOW LOTUS SPORTS CARS ARE BOUGHT BY CHINESE

ONE of Britain’s oldest sports car makers is being bought by the Chinese.

China’s Geely, which owns the London Taxi Company and Sweden’s Volvo Car Group, is buying a 49.9pc stake in Proton, the company that owns Lotus.

It will take control of Norwichbased Lotus as part of the deal. Lotus, which made a loss of £27.6m in the 12 months to the end of March 2016, is a leader in composite materials and lightweighting technology.

Geely is expected to use the tech- nology to meet stringent emissions regulations in China.

Lotus boss Jean-Marc Gales has been trying to return the firm to profit after two decades in the red.

Its stake in Malaysian carmaker Proton is also expected to give Geely access to the South East Asian market, where it wants to use Volvo technologies to reclaim market share.

Geely plans to use Proton’s plant which makes right-hand cars, to break into the South East Asian righthand vehicle market.

Lotus was founded in 1952 by Colin Chapman. Lotus logo has his initials, ACBC, for Antony Colin Bruce Chapman Chapman founded Lotus to feed his racing habit. For years it was one of Ferrari’s chief rivals on the racetrack – but stopped racing in...