Mike Johnstone's charcoal suit matches neatly the tasteful modern walls of Group Lotus's new showroom in Piccadilly, central London, across the road from the Ritz Hotel. The bearded, clear-eyed, late-40s Brit meets us downstairs in a spacious meeting-cum-conference-room basement, with gleaming cars on sale a floor above.
A little over a year ago, Johnstone joined Group Lotus from Volvo as global vice-president in charge of commercial operations. Before that, he had six years with Skoda, having arrived in the automotive business via motorcycle marques that included Harley-Davidson, for which he launched the all-electric (but problematic) Livewire spin-off. Today we're talking about the life and times of the enigmatic Chinesecontrolled Lotus organisation, newly branded by its proprietors as 'Born British, raised globally'.
Johnstone needs a bit of prompting to talk about himself but cheerfully agrees that leading Group Lotus's global commercial operations is a big challenge- although he insists he still sleeps well at night. "I've got a global team of about 700 people to help me," he says. "Together we're responsible for sales, marketing, comms, aftersales, user experience and product strategy. I'm based in London; we're about to open a new office for our central team of 200. And we have offices in the US, Amsterdam and Dubai. Plus Shanghai, obviously." Why choose London for the headquarters? Because there's a great pool of talent here already and talented people from other capitals will come here for the right job. The Lotus of today is quite different from the perpetually strife-torn British sports car maker that existed before Geely took a 51% interest in 2017 and changed everything. Broadly speaking, there are now two Lotus divisions, and they contrast heavily in size.
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