In the case of Lotus (and to a smaller extent Ferrrari) the car manufacturer side only existed to fund the racing team. The first series of Lotus (types 1 to 6) were pure racing cars. It was only with the type 7 that a road/race car was developed. The Elite, Elan and Europa all had race versions produced. The first car that Lotus never produced a racing version of (at least in it's initial version) was the Esprit and the first makes where there were no racing versions in any series were the Excel and Eclat.
It wasn't until 1989 that Lotus Cars and Lotus F1 were split. The shares in Team Lotus were bought by Peter Warr and the shares in Group Lotus (Lotus cars etc) were initally bought by GM and the Bugati before ending up in the hands of Proton. Obviously despite several attempts to keep Team Lotus going, the team was wound up in 1994. The assets were purchased by David Hunt who entered into a merger with Pacific GP for the 1995 season (if you look at the Silver Pacific GP cars from that season you will see a Racing Green stripe around the cockpit and a Lotus badge on the nose). The Lotus name went all together at the end of 95. David Hunt retains the name rights and Litespeed F3 were in negotiation with him to return the name to F1 if their application was succesful.
