Brian Braddock

The Evora was a once in a generation unrepeatable event - the first and last all new petrol Lotus since the Elise. It was engineered, designed and developed by a who’s who team of Lotus legends with direct links to the Chapman era, including Roger Becker and Mike Kimberley who worked closely with Colin Chapman for years. Then we have to mention the likes of Tony Shute, Richard Rackham, Steve Crijns, Russell Carr among others hugely respected in the car industry. The Evora was further refined and continuously developed by Matt Becker and Gavan Kershaw who also raced it with remarkable success using much of the road car’s hardware - including the forged aluminium wishbones fitted to every Evora which were intentionally over-engineered for a new Esprit and proved tough enough to handle endurance racing. It remains a work of unappreciated genius and was benchmarked during the development of a number of other sports cars including the Ferrari 458. Emira production has been hit by endless delays and problems, many cars have numerous well documented issues, several still unresolved, more problems than I remember the Evora having. Obviously teething problems are to be expected with a brand new production facility but Lotus have struggled to get on top of them and there is little evidence to date to suggest quality has really been improved. Most of what is great about the Emira in terms of how it drives is directly down to the fundamental excellence of its predecessor. When you consider the work on the Evora also led directly to the Exige V6 its importance in Lotus road car history cannot be understated. That driving position, the placement of all the controls was set very precisely by Roger Becker himself. Not a committee concerned with where obese Americans are going to put their super gulp XXL drinks. It’s great that the Emira has found so many buyers new to Lotus who neither know nor care anything about the car to which it owes so much or the team behind it. But for those here that do, the Emira has very big shoes to fill.

How would stones get into the vent in the pics above unless it was from the tyres through the inside of the wheel arch? Gavan Kershaw said in person that the near identical vents on an Elise Cup 260 were worth approximately 6kg of downforce. This might not sound much but they are there to reduce lift, not produce downforce. They help the front aero parts generate more net negative lift and importantly in the case of the Elise Cup 260 (which has a huge rear wing) to be better balanced front to rear aerodynamically. This means the aero benefit from the vents is much greater than the modest downforce figure suggests. High downforce at one end of the car is considered less effective than a lower overall figure that is better balanced. At least everyone can now agree that the vents are not closed.

Later vents might look closed but are not, different design, Cup 380 was first Lotus to have vented arches looks like they had no wheel arch liners at all at least on the early cars. 430s had liners that let air through but not stones.

Lotus ERA for me. Short, to the point with gravitas. Doesn’t need a whole page of a press release to explain it! Heralds a new Lotus era. End of. That said endless jokes about Lotus Error would get old pretty quick. Whatevija, it is what it is!

Sounds a bit steep! Try Black Circles, rear Cup 2s for a 410 are £265 each, fitted. Deal on PS4s currently too, £230 for each rear plus another £40 off when you buy 4, using code 4MICH40. Cup2 is worth the extra on a 410 though I reckon.

It’s very cool but nothing like the T130. Which was heavily influenced by the Panther Solo 😉

Sorry to hear you’ve had issues, doesn’t do much for the confidence especially when you’re far from home. Could it even be something to do with the weather? Sounds pretty extreme over in France right now. Hope you get a speedy and permanent fix and glad the car didn’t leave you stranded.

I was at Nissan at the time of the Qashqai launch and I can tell you first hand that they never had any idea that it was going to be such a massive hit. It was a total punt to nothing after years of struggling to gain C-segment market share! The timing was more luck than judgement.

Funny then how people seem to like the least practical, least comfortable, 600bhp SUVs the most! No one’s slagging Porsche off they most certainly did get lucky with the rebadged VWs. Ask anyone at Porsche!

Buddsy a fair point but I would conclude that you need get an Exige V6 while you can. Plenty of automotive adventures still to be had out there that might not be available in the near future. A lot here are making the assumption that a Lotus SUV is guaranteed to be successful. I would challenge that. The Evora makes perfect sense in theory. Reality - people just carried on buying 911s. It’s more likely that much the same will happen again with the Chinese built and engineered Lotus Earthworm vs Macan than it be a runaway success. 3 people here want one just because it’s a Lotus, that’s great but no-one here represents joe public who mostly doesn’t know what a Lotis is. The question is what would you rather see? Billions wasted on a failed SUV or see Lotus try their luck with a new Esprit?

No crime in liking SUVs either but think you might have been a bit trigger happy liking a post that ducked the question. Most here seem to think a Lotus SUV is a necessary evil at best so not really cause for celebration. As for why copying Porsche might not work, let’s start with how Porsche and Lotus are very different companies in very different circumstances. Car mags like to create this idea of a rivalry but really there isn’t one. Porsche need to find homes for over 200k high end cars every year. They will stick a Porsche badge on anything in order to hit those numbers and have done. Lotus’s wildest dreams would be to hit 10k cars a year. You can do that profitably with sports cars alone as Ferrari and McLaren have shown. Mazda have sold huge numbers of light, two seater sports cars that could and should be wearing a Lotus badge on the nose. The Porsche badge remains aspirational for most in a way the Lotus badge simply isn’t and a Lotus SUV will do nothing to change that. A successful hypercar and succession of brilliant desirable supercars just might. The badge is primarily what sells Cayennes and Macans. Porsche never stood for anything like ‘simplify and add lightness’ so an SUV is a strange change of direction not a contradiction of the principles that built the company and the brand. SUVs should have done irreparable harm to the Porsche brand and image but they got lucky and caught a wave no-one saw coming. They also worked out how to make wealthy people even richer with the GT cars which maintains a media buzz around their sportscars a feeding frenzy of demand by bringing in customers who only have a passing interest in cars. It’s a great distraction away from the fact that a once great dedicated sports car maker is now primarily an SUV re-badger with a sideline in sports cars. In my direct experience with the motor industry, behind the scenes no-one has much of a clue about what’s going to work or not. Lots of experts with hindsight but Porsche had no idea the SUV gamble was going to work. Honda we’re convinced they had to drop performance cars and go full eco. Lotus had no clue the Elise would be such a hit or that the 7 would still be in production today. Nissan’s Qashqai was a complete roll of the dice. JLR thought the Range Rover coupe was going to be a sure fire hit. Same for Hondas new NSX. Porsche thought it was a good idea to ditch the flat 6 from Boxster and Cayman and manual box from the GT3, something they’ve since reversed. Its very hard to see how a Lotus SUV could be a huge hit, Porsche have a massive head start, vast economies of scale and a much more aspirational badge. Will anyone care if a Lotus SUV weighs 1600kg (light for an SUV)? What if it’s 2 tons? As always the Lotus will have to be much better and cheaper just to make any kind of dent. Seems like a very tall order to me.

While it’s somewhat reassuring that no one on this forum can explain the popularity of SUVs it does beg the question why some of the same Lotus stalwarts welcome the arrival of a Lotus SUV? Best reason given so far appears to be ‘just cos’. But I welcome some debate at least. The day the idea of a Lotus SUV isn’t stirring up some strong views on here is a very sad day indeed.

As much as Scotty seems to like your posts you still haven’t answered the question as to why you think it would work for Lotus and why you don’t think there’s any other way. Maybe Scotty knows?

What makes you think it would work for Lotus? Or that there is no other way forward?