Kingsuala Lynnpur: The Lotus team celebrated its 500th race in Valencia with the sort of do its founder, innovative engineering and tax dodge genius Colin Chapman would have been proud, writes our tenuous marketing correspondent, Hector Hopscotch.
The commemoration, organised by the new owners of the naming rights who’d previously sort-of heard of them through an investment broker working for a venture capitalist, were keen to celebrate not just the sporadic history of the marque but also reflect on Lotus as a place as much as a company, it says here in the press junket.
“Lotus is a very proud brand – I mean, company”, Team Owner Tony Fernandes’ fat grinning face cynically ejaculated, stood in front of an authentic Ayrton Senna John Player Special Lotus 97T, now painted in Air Asia colours, its Renault motif replaced with a Proton emblem and the wing mirrors with models of the Petronas Towers.
Chapman family gather round for traditional Lotus celebration
“Stood here now, in the Malaysian Embassy, surrounded by Proton staff and Colin’s son, err…Mr Chapman, I’m sure Colin would have tears in his eyes at this celebration of how far his team has come to arrive at the place it is today”, Fernandes added between mouthfuls of the tasty Terengganu fish paste snack.
Chapman, who was as famously patriotic as he was an embezzler of UK government funds, would often hum the National Anthem whilst tinkering with his latest impetuous harum-scarum car innovation and always made sure the Union Jack was draped proudly over the coffins of all his dead drivers. Unless they were German.
Ayrton Senna drives his JPS Lotus past what looks like a bit of the Malaysian flag, making a Proton employee literally suffer an erectal prolapse
“Both myself and the entire family have been touched by the whole experience of the new Lotus,” Clive, Colin’s son, heir and co-owner of over 30% of any marketing revenue generated by the new team, acknowledged emotionally to a bemused Oriental-faced throng.
“As well as building the team from scratch, sacrificing so much along the way at times just to keep the enterprise afloat for the engineering principles he believed in, dad also believed strongly in 2 other things: peanut butter and low cost airlines.”
“He would therefore have been delighted at the happy accident of today’s Team Lotus celebrating both these things – even if the engineering side is frankly, total bobbins”, he added, wiping away a tear with a Proton cheque book before – just like his dad – hurling his hat into the air in celebration. Only with the hat being in the colours of the Malaysian national flag and the shape of a stetson.
The sound of a 54 year old moustachio’d male corpse spinning in his Norfolk grave was later played back on an episode of UK’s Most Haunted.
