While protons may be absolutely essential subatomic bits of your joe-schmoe lotus, who knew that Proton was planning to diversify and outsource its Hethel acquisition's creations? But Malaysia's Proton is doing just that, giving China's Jinhua Neoplan the go-ahead to build two Lotus models, which may be the Europa and the Gen-2 (assumedly rebranded with a moniker beginning with "e" so as to maintain the British marque's alliterative legacy. [China Daily]