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Lotus has announced a 55% rise in sales at the conclusion of its 2014/15 financial year (FY), with sales volume jumping to 2,015 units from 1,296 units in 2013/14. It's the best result achieved by Lotus since FY 2008/09.

Key global markets that showed big growth were China (+186%), France (+177%) and Germany (+130%), while Japan (+103%) remained the Malaysian-owned company's largest export market. UK sales have more than doubled to 346 units (+102%), while the US market, which sells the Evora as a road car and the Elise/Exige for track use only, saw a 24% increase.

Leading the way is the Elise range, with a 80% increase in volume to 729 cars. The Exige S continues its positive growth (+52%) with 724 cars, while the Evora is up by 35% with 562 cars. These figures are expected to change with the launch of new Evora 400 in August. Helping the progress are two new models: the Elise 220 Cup and the Exige S automatic in both coupe and roadster forms.

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"This positive result is something that we have not witnessed at Lotus for many years. We are meeting both time and budget deadlines. Yet, we appreciate that we still have hard work to do to maintain the progress. Our continued expansion demonstrates the customer confidence in Lotus and that our product development strategy is meeting its objectives, while remaining true to our core pillars of efficiency, light weight, high performance and driving purity in the most desirable packaging," said Jean-Marc Gales, CEO of Group Lotus.

"The reason that we are making such vital headway lies in our employees' commitment to avoid delays in project deliveries and I am immensely pleased with the cultural changes that have been effected by our staff across the whole of Lotus. Looking to the future, we are working on new Lotus cars and have a number of exciting announcements and reveals over the next 18 months," he added.

Along with the sales growth, dealer strength has also grown, with 36 new outlets in the global network in FY 2014/15 taking the total to 174 Lotus dealers worldwide.