The boss of Lotus Australia says he is determined to make the British sports car maker a proper player in this market, as dealerships expand across the country and new product such as sports SUV are tipped to be delivered into local showrooms within three years.

In 2016, Lotus polled its lowest sales in 15 years with just 31 units sold as the beleaguered brand switched distributors from Ateco Automotive conglomerate to Sydney’s independent Simply Sports Cars dealership (which had long been the brand’s top-selling dealer anyway).

“We’d be hoping to hit out 100-plus cars somewhere around the year 2019,” Gibbs tells MOTOR.

“We are confident, based on the communications that are coming to us, that we are going to see some new product in the coming years. We are thinking it’s probably a couple of years away.”

That will likely include a Porsche Macan-rivalling medium SUV, Gibbs says, although he is clear that such a model from Lotus must have a focus on light weight and the racetrack.

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The Lotus APX concept was revealed in 2006, but unsurprisingly never made it to production.

“There are a lot of Lotus owners at the moment towing their cars around on trailers behind other brands’ SUVs and I’m sure if they feel the Lotus is a viable option, they are quite happy to tow behind a Lotus,” he says of the local potential.

“There is certainly a high degree of interest within the existing community. As to the market, whether the market can cope with another SUV coming in, I guess we would just look to the broader market trends and statistics and attitudes at the moment, and at the moment there doesn’t seem to be any let-up at all in the appetite for SUVs.

A new Elise, Exige and Evora are then also tipped to follow by the early 2020s.

Lotus currently has one dealership in each of the five mainland states only, but a new Simply Sports Cars dealer in Melbourne will open this month to complement the Zagame operation in nearby Richmond.

“You don’t do that sort of stuff [buy-out] unless you plan to do something with it and grow and benefit from it,” he adds.