Shrugged shoulders, exchanged glances, and what I believe is the honest answer: we just don't know. I'm at Lotus HQ and have asked the inevitable question. What news?

There are rumours that DRB-Hicom, the investor which recently bought Lotus's parent company, Proton, doesn't quite share Proton's vision for the success of The Lotus Plan (you know the one, featuring Swizz Beatz and Mansory).

A transitional phase, which gave DRB-Hicom 60 days to decide what to do with Proton, has elapsed - its representatives duly visited Hethel during that time.

The options? Sell Lotus off. Send it into administration and then sell it off. Or hold their nerve and give the people who work at Lotus what they deserve: the opportunity to make a new range of world-class sports cars under strong, sensible leadership. I know which one of those sounds like it would be a novelty.

Given some of the coverage, you'd be forgiven for thinking nothing at all was happening at Lotus HQ. But instead they do what good people do: they get on with things. The new test track is finished. Cranes and wagons are still, even today, erecting new production buildings. Cars, albeit in far smaller volumes than is ideal, move down the line.

And although the chequebook is closed, contrary to reports that development has stopped, Lotus's engineers have more product to develop than they have time on their hands. Hence the reason they let a road tester like me into the place yesterday: to drive the newly finished, supercharged V6-engined Exige S.

While I can tell you I've driven it, until the 25th of this month I can't tell you what it's like. Driving a car under embargo is not a particularly unusual arrangement (it stops a lot of inter-mag aggro) but is, in this case, a particularly frustrating one.

Lotus's situation isn't like that of Saab. The engineering expertise is too valuable to go to waste; even if DRB-Hicom doesn't want it, you can be sure somebody will. But cars aren't like Salad Cream or BBC 6Music. Create uncertainty about their future  and people don't flock to consume them. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I hope, then, that in two weeks' time there'll be a less uncertain and more positive backdrop when we bring you the Exige S story. The cars, and the people who have developed them, deserve nothing less.