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Lotus's five-car launch of a range of sports cars spanning from 300 to 620 horsepower was one of the Paris highlights. The new cars signal Lotus's intention to reinvent itself, transforming from hardcore niche player to full-line, luxury-supercar grandee. It's a staggering turnaround plan, backed, Lotus says, by a billion-dollar investment. The new cars will be launched between mid-2012 and mid-2015.

Lotus Elite Concept

In an astonishingly audacious move, Lotus intends to burst out of its Spartan quasi-racer niche. It has announced the Elite, a car to challenge the high-profile luxury GT supercars -- Ferrari California, Aston Martin DB9, AMG SL, Corvette ZR1.
The Elite will be shown at the Paris salon, and is intended for production in spring 2014. Lotus is showing it this early because it obviously needs to make a whole new audience aware of the brand.

Lamborghini Sesto Elemento Concept

While Ferrari, Porsche, and others tinker with hybridization of their supercars, Lamborghini is betting the bull farm on extreme weight reduction to meet its target of a 35-percent CO2 reduction by 2015, as the name of its latest concept car -- Sesto Elemento -- suggests. That translates to "sixth element," which periodic-table enthusiasts will recognize as C, or carbon. Practically everything but its V-10 all-wheel-drivetrain (swapped in unchanged from a Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera), tires, and fasteners is made of the stuff. Weight is conservatively estimated at 2200 pounds -- that undercuts its "super-light" drivetrain donor by about 750 pounds for an impressive weight-to-power ratio of 3.9 pounds per horsepower. Lamborghini's computers predict 0-to-62 mph acceleration in 2.5 seconds!
Conceived at the Sant'Agata factory's Advanced Composite Research Center in cooperation with technology partners Boeing and the University of Washington in Seattle, the heart of this technology demonstrator is a fully structural carbon-fiber monocoque that unites 60 percent of the structure in a single bonded unit that incorporates most of the brackets and mounting hardware for the remaining parts. The crash-structural core is formed using a patented low-pressure resin-transfer mold process known internally as RTM-Lambo.
Lamborghini Sesto Elemento Concept Rear
Here's how it works: Lightweight, inexpensive carbon-fiber male and female molds are constructed to form a complex part like the passenger tub, which integrates the seat shells in the concept. Dry sheets of four-axis carbon fiber (picture two square weaves with the layers rotated 45 degrees) are cut using computer-guided blades, and the ones that must conform to complex contours are molded by heating them to 400 degrees and squeezing them in an 88,000-ton press. A tiny bit of resin helps them hold this shape. These sheets and various foam inserts required to provide structural sections are positioned in the master mold with more laser guidance, along with aluminum inserts that are later tapped as mounting plates. Then the male mold clamps it all in place; a vacuum is created to remove any air from the part; and the resin is injected. Early Lamborghini estimates suggest monocoques built this way at supercar volumes and even a bit higher could cost as little as a third as much as a conventional steel one, but notes that this procedure does not produce a class-A paintable surface. Hence the structural outer roof panel is made using more conventional resin-impregnated and autoclave-cured two-axis carbon-fiber