Dit is geen Lotus!?!

Nee het is een Lotus NYO! Waarom dan? Sorry had geen zin om alles te vertalen: The back story starts with as a joint venture between the Chinese bus maker Youngman Group and Malaysia’s Proton, then the sole owner of the Lotus brand. The joint venture was initially called Youngman-Proton, it made several Proton-branded cars for the Chinese market. Then Youngman managed somehow to get its hand on the Chinese right for the Lotus name, both in English and Chinese (莲花) .

Youngman then started selling the Proton cars as “Youngman Engineered by Lotus”. Proton wasn’t happy about this and when the joint venture expired in 2012 they opted out. Youngman however simply continued to make and sell the vehicles under the Youngman-Lotus name. It wasn’t a success. Sales were slow, a good looking SUV never materialized, and in 2014 the company cancelled operations.

But they still had the Lotus names, and they had shown they liked to keep them. When Lotus officially entered China in 2011 Youngman refused to sell the names, so Lotus had no choice to use ‘new’ names: Lotus NYO and 路特.