In 2006, Youth Automobile Group introduced Lotus Technology to jointly establish a research and development center, and shortly thereafter the Youth Lotus brand was officially established. At first, people would mistakenly associate it with the British Lotus (now known as Lotus), in fact, the Youth Automobile Group just used the naming method of Lotus, plus a brand logo designed with a special British style, and a car brand with British ancestry was born.
In 2006, Youth Automobile Group signed a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement with Lotus Automobile Technology Engineering Company of the United Kingdom, a subsidiary of Proton Group, which included the joint launch of a new Lotus brand car by the two companies as a passenger car brand under the Youth Automobile Group.
Young Lotus's first sedan is based on Proton Malaysia's GEN-2, Proton GEN-2 was officially launched in 2004, the car was independently designed and developed by Proton Malaysia, using a front-drive layout, its engine and platform jointly developed by Proton and British Lotus, the powertrain includes a variety of 1.3-liter and 1.6-liter inline four-cylinder petrol engines, equipped with a 5-speed manual transmission and a 4-speed automatic transmission. Originally, the car had only a 5-door hatchback version, but in 2008, Proton introduced the sedan gen-2.
After Proton GEN-2 was introduced to the Chinese market by Young Lotus, its shape was almost entirely based on the design of GEN-2, but the car logo changed. In January 2008, Youth Automobile announced that its first car racing (RCR) was officially launched, four models were imported into The country, priced at 129,800 yuan to 149,800 yuan, Youngman Automobile positioned it as an urban coupe, but due to insufficient brand influence and vague product positioning, the market response of the car was not strong.
On December 6, 2008, the domestic Lotus Racing officially rolled off the production line, and the price of the domestically produced racing was lowered, and the brand logo was changed from the previous EUROPESTAR to LOTUS, with the aim of further establishing a relationship with Lotus. The domestic racing was renamed Lotus L3, the appearance and power have not changed, still equipped with a 1.6-liter in-line four-cylinder engine, the maximum power of 112 horsepower, the maximum torque of 149N·m, equipped with a 5-speed manual and 4-speed automatic transmission, 0-100km/h acceleration time of 10.5 seconds, comprehensive fuel consumption of 7.7 liters / 100 km.
However, it is surprising that even if the price has been reduced after domestic production, the sales of Lotus L3 are still quite sluggish, and there are almost no lotus L3s on the road. Although Youth Automobile locked the competitors of the Lotus L3 into sports family cars such as the Mazda 3 and Fox at that time, the Lotus L3 had less than half an advantage regardless of brand influence, word of mouth, vehicle configuration or price. In order to enrich the product camp, Youth Automobile has since launched a number of models, including lotus L5, but in the end, this young car brand still disappeared from everyone's sight. (Photo/Text: Autohome Li Haopeng)