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Lotus to invest £500 million to build Esprit, Eterne, Elite & Elan. 1900 new jobs

The new Lotus Esprit Dany Bahar – Lotus boss – revealed plans at last year’s Paris Motor Show to turn Lotus in to an East Anglian Aston Martin. Those plans included one car we knew about – the new Lotus Esprit – and a number we didn’t – the Lotus Eterne, Lotus Elite, Lotus Elan and a new Lotus Elite. But the plans seemed to be nothing more than a wish list, and although it was intimated that Lotus owners Proton were going to provide a war chest of £770 million to fund the development, that later appeared to be an intent to provide Lotus with funds to develop a new range of cars, rather than an actual commitment.

Bentley SUV (Bentley Falcon) to get completely new design – EXP 9 F scrapped

Car & Driver are reporting that Bentley’s new Design chief - Luc Donckerwolke – is scrapping the Bentley SUV Concept and starting again. Despite the less than friendly response to the Bentley SUV, Bentley went on to show it at both the Beijing Motor Show and Pebble Beach but made it clear that the SUV was just a concept; a work in progress. But the arrival of Luc Donckerwolke as Bentley’s Chief Designer appears to have signalled the end of the EXP 9 F concept completely, with Car and Driver reporting that Donckerwolke isn’t overseeing a tinkering with the EXP 9 F Concept, but is scrapping it altogether.

German premium brands go SUV crazy: 10 new 4x4s coming

By Tim Pollard Motor Industry 04 August 2014 11:15 Here’s a new trend among the German premium manufacturers that appears to be reaching boiling point: the insatiable rise of SUVs and crossovers. It’s been happening for a while, of course, but CAR can reveal that no fewer than 10 - ten! - new 4x4s are on the drawing boards at Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.