By David Bailey

Lotus, famous for F1 success decades ago and James Bond’s underwater Esprit – driven by the sadly departed Roger Moore – has been taken over by the Chinese firm Geely.

Developing a genuinely new car costs several hundred million pounds. Lotus has neither the volume to generate cash for R&D nor the prestige to charge high prices.

Even Aston can’t do it on its own anymore and has forged a relationship with Daimler whereby Aston can access Mercedes AMG technology. That is helping to develop new models much more cheaply, and may over time lead to platform sharing.

Indeed, I expect over time for Aston to be acquired by Mercedes just as other premium car brands have been snapped up by bigger players…