That Lotus magic
THREE INNOVATIONS AT THE HEART OF THE EVIJA
1. Sculpted by air
Like the 72, the Evija’s shape has been designed from the get-go with aerodynamics at its heart. The Evija is a ‘porous’ design, shaped by taking things away rather than adding on. Airflow through the nose pushes down on the front suspension, and venturi tunnels duct flow through the car to its wake to reduce drag.
2. Lots of rubber
Although lead dynamics engineer James Hazelhurst says the Evija’s aerodynamics are crucial to its performance, he adds: “We want to start with getting the mechanical grip right. Electric power opens up a whole new box of tools [traction management, torque vectoring] but we don’t want to use them until the grip without them is just right.”
3. Cleverly done
Where more mainstream EVs floor-mount batteries in a ‘skateboard’ chassis, and Rimac’s Nevera hypercar positions its battery in an H-shape, dividing its bulk and weight along the car, Lotus has chosen to position its battery behind the driver, concentrating mass in the middle for the most responsive possible handling balance.
bringing it up to temperature before I drive.
He’s driving it quickly, too. Crisp heel-and-toe downchanges into the hairpins, getting on the power so the car adopts a neutral balance mid-corner, and sparing few of the DFV’s horses once it’s warmed up.
“The problem is, I always end up driving too fast,” he says, mock-ruefully back in the pitlane. He debriefs lead mechanic Tim Gardner, and suggests moving the pedals back a little before I drive. “That said, I don’t mind if you don’t get full throttle…” Chapman adds.
Of all the 72s, chassis 5 is a particularly special car. Raced almost exclusively by world champion Emerson Fittipaldi and nicknamed Old Faithful, it won Grands Prix in three different seasons. After a painstaking five-year restoration it was reunited with Fittipaldi, emotionally, to drive at Goodwood in 2019.
It’s a complex machine. “The restoration took an awful lot of work,” Chapman says. “When racing in period, the Lotus mechanics were always the first to arrive and the last to leave. Changing a torsion bar means removing the fuel tanks; last-minute set-up requests caused some eye-rolling…”
Sliding down into the cockpit, it’s like lying in a very narrow bathtub with a small but supportive cushion in the small of your back. There’s a real patina here; original paint, the residue of the glue bonding the aluminium chassis panels. It even smells great – a blend of oil, fuel and hot metal. If you could bottle it, I’d buy it.
The steering wheel is further away than you expect, and a tad higher – your arms are almost straight, reaching ahead of you for the rim. The gearlever is to the right, with a bulge fashioned into the monocoque allowing enough space to get your hand around it. Into first gear (back and to the left; it’s a dogleg shift), enough revs to avoid stalling and… we’re away.
Into the first sweeping corners of Lotus’s test circuit, the steering response is instant – turn the tiny steering wheel by what feels like little more than a millimetre and the front slicks arrow for the apex. Over the plastic cockpit shroud you can just see the tops of the tyres, helping you
Evija won’t be the first electric hypercar, but there’s little doubt it will be the most involving
place the car perfectly – the 72’s ‘Becker points’, if you will.
Out of the first hairpin I squeeze the throttle, its long travel a natural traction control – but traction from the huge rear slicks on this sun-warmed circuit is immense. Oh my word, the 72 is fast. Even after the Evija the old-timer’s speed is startling. This rebuilt Cosworth DFV is running about 330kW, says Gardner. In a car weighing 530kg or so, it feels sensational. Naively, perhaps, I’d expected the 72 to feel broadly comparable, in a straight line at least, to a modern supercar. It was designed 50 years ago, after all. But my sums put the power-to-weight ratio at 625kW per tonne (a McLaren Senna is 485kW per tonne) and it feels every bit as quick as that sounds. The thought of going wheel-to-wheel in a slipstreaming battle at Monza, or piling into the Karussell at the Nurburgring… Terrifying.
It’s remarkably smooth-riding for a racing car, absorbing the circuit’s kerbs sweetly. And that’s one of the most uncanny things about the 72 – it feels almost like an Elise in the way it blends immediate steering response with supple, malleable and yet controlled suspension movements. It was conceived to ruthlessly win races, yet it somehow feels inherently like a Lotus sports car to drive, too. Based on this first impression, in far-from-final prototype guise, the same is true of the Evija. It won’t be the first electric hypercar, but there’s little doubt it will be the most involving, the most interactive – the most Lotus – to drive.