Sorry to bump this back up, but a recent article by Joe Saward on the latest sponsorship deal that Lotus have announced - which will be to sponsor four cars in the German ATS Formula 3 Cup - is making me wonder if there is anything that Bahar hasn't tried sticking a Group Lotus sticker on.
We have the Formula 1 sponsorship deal, a deal with ART Grand Prix for GP2 and GP3 branded teams, a sponsorship deal with Kolles to run a Group Lotus branded LMP2 car (with a Judd engine) and are a nominated reserve team in the GTE class for this years Le Mans team, a deal with Judd and a number of IndyCar teams to run both Lotus tuned engines and sponsorship package and now this. According to Racecar Engineering, there is even a tarmac rally version of the Exige in the works right now - dubbed the R-GT - which was shaken down in late December last year and due to be launched this year (and - for once - it seems that Group Lotus are not promoting this using the "JPS lite" livery, but a red, white and light blue livery instead).
http://www.racecar-engineering.com/news ... irst-time/Looking at that list, it seems as if Bahar really is sticking by his promise to promote the Group Lotus name in every major series and then some - but the more that Bahar spreads the Lotus marque around, the more you start to wonder where the money is coming to fund all of these sponsorship deals. That is even more pertinent now that the Malaysian Government is selling its stake in Proton, since it means that Group Lotus can't rely on Proton bailing them out for much longer...