Lotus business blossoms

By ALASTAIR SLOANE

A St Kentigern College old boy, who until a few months ago headed an Italian company building bulletproof four-wheel-drive vehicles for the rich and famous, is one of the men behind the new-look Lotus operation in New Zealand.

Roger Phillips and long-time Auckland Lotus specialist Ken Woodburn, of KW Historics, have formed a new distributorship, Lotus Cars NZ, "to provide sales support, compliance and restoration services to Lotus customers and introduce new Elise models".

The new company, based in East Tamaki, offers two-year warranties on new vehicles and up to 12 months on used.

Some of the cars will be supplied by the Lotus set-up in Australia; others will come direct from Britain.

"The company has over 15 years' experience in restoration, compliance, design and race preparation, and can design and build vehicles from concept to completion," said Phillips.

The first of the new lightweight Mark II Elise models arrives this week, costing $84,995. Two other high-performance Elise variants will come later.

The 700kg Elise is powered by the 1.8-litre Rover K series engine, producing about 90kW (120bhp) in standard form. The faster models will develop about 118kW (160 bhp).

Phillips said they want to fly the Lotus flag in New Zealand. "It's a shrinking market - we want to build it up.

"We don't expect to sell more than about eight new cars a year but we want people to know we are there.

"We want to be included on buyers' lists along with Porsche, Ferrari and cars like the Audi TT."

Phillips and Woodburn have a handful of used Lotus models for sale, including a twin-turbo V8 Esprit, an early 1970s Elan and a couple of Excels.

There is also a rare 1990 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce, the last of the series 115 rear-drive models. Phillips bought it from a professor at Notre Dame university, in Indiana.

Phillips, 50, returned to New Zealand in February after 25 years overseas. He left in the 1970s after graduating with a Diploma of Agriculture from Lincoln College and headed to Perth.

There he made a name for himself - and claimed two Australian design awards and a worldwide patent - by building farm spray equipment and motorhomes. All the while he dabbled with designing and building cars and racing in mostly classic events.

He expanded into Canada and the United States and into the tractor industry before moving to Britain - and more car design, as well as racing at Silverstone, Brands Hatch and Le Mans.

A role developing Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Lotus, Cobra and Holden Special Vehicles franchises in Britain (he helped to organise the much-publicised "shootout" in Germany between an HSV Clubsport, BMW M5 and Mercedes-Benz E55) followed before he took over the Lotus franchise in California.

He turned it into the top Lotus outlet in America - and sold luxury marques to Rod Stewart, Nicolas Cage, Jack Lemmon and Shaquille O'Neal - before going to Italy as director of operations for coachbuilder LaForza International, maker of the exclusive off-roader, the LaForza Magnum.

The company is based at Cherasco, 40km south of Turin. The Magnum is a Range Rover-sized space-frame vehicle built on a ladder frame with a three-tonne Iveco Daily suspension system, an independent torsion bar at the front and a live axle and air suspension at the rear. It comes with a choice of three engines - a reworked 3.2-litre V6 Alfa Romeo with an unusually flat torque curve, a 3.9-litre Iveco common-rail diesel, or a 6-litre General Motors V8.

Customers can order armoured models with 38mm glass, 6mm steel panels and run-flat tyres. Optional extras include smoke canisters and thunderflash launchers.

"Nobody in their right mind would get into this business from the ground up," he told British Autocar magazine last year. "It's an insanity battle - we're lucky there are enough indulgent people in the world who want something individual."

So why did he leave LaForza? "I had promised my wife I would go home when I turned 50," said Phillips. "New Zealand is my home."