@TomE it's both sad and sobering to read all your comments in this thread. It's now pretty evident that the goal of being a world-player which Matt has stated is their goal, was and is mostly focused on designing and building cars. Lotus has never had to be more than that for the most part, and taking aim at Porsche seems to have been purely focused at the car more than anything else. At least at this stage.
It seems odd to me that Matt, Russell and Gavan would actually go around with the gray car in the U.S., talk to and listen to what people are saying about it, then come back and seemingly take almost no action towards the customer side of everything, except for what it would be like to drive and use the car once they have it. They've focused on the driver experience, "For The Drivers" which is fine and all, but clearly weren't ready at all for the customer experience which is very much a part of being a world-class player.
It looks like their focus has already shifted to the Type 132 and whatever else is in the works in that regard. That's fine, and certainly needs to be done, but I hope they're adding improvements to the customer experience or they're going to have real problems. Once negative impressions (real or imagined) make it into the press, it becomes very very difficult to overcome the perception that creates. It's fine to be a quirky boutique company when you're small, but that doesn't work if you're trying to move up into the bigger leagues. Alfa Romeo was already a bigger player than Lotus was/is, and even they forgot to learn that lesson. It's cost them, badly. The Achilles heal for Alfa wasn't the car, although there were some negative reviews about the reliability, what did them in was the dealer network and customer experience there.
The one you need to talk to is Matt. Changes of this type and magnitude need to come down from the top, because they also need a budget and the authority to use it to make the necessary changes. That's what killed Alfa. FCA put people in charge of the customer experience, but didn't give them the budget or the authority to spend the money to fix the problems.
If they don't have it already, Lotus needs to add (as an internal slogan if nothing else) "For The Customers", and put the same amount of attention to detail into that as they have into designing and building the Emira. If they can create and provide a customer experience that works the way the Emira looks,
then they would become the world-class player they say they want to be. In the meantime, while the car has made great progress, the customer experience seems to be at the Goodwood reveal stage.