IGNITION

Lotus’s all-new sports car will be its last with internal combustion before it embarks on an all-electric future. We find out what’s in store

Lotus has confirmed its Elise replacement, Ferrari has revealed an even faster 812, and we have a tribute to Richard Parry-jones

EMIRA IT IS, THEN. The name given to the car that will create the bridge between the Lotus we know today and the electrified Lotus of tomorrow. And it will happen within the decade. Not bad for a company that was still sourcing the chicken wire used in the Elise’s front clam opening from the local farm supplies shop as recently as 2016.

Lotus today isn’t the Lotus of, well, any time in the last 80 years. Regardless of its owner and the promises given, it has rarely had the support it always needed. Poorly funded, under- resourced and often forgotten and left to fight for itself, it’s a miracle Lotus still existed for Geely to buy in 2017. No more the distant owner with a flaky credit line, China’s most ambitious automotive conglomerate doesn’t do things by halves, which is why there’s a confidence in newly appointed managing director Matt Windle’s voice when he presents Lotus’s ‘Vision80’ strategy to evo.

Windle joined Lotus in 2018 as part of an engineering team created by then-ceo Phil Popham, and when Popham stood down at the end of 2019, Windle took charge to embark on the strategy he had helped shape: ‘I’d worked with Phil on Vision80 from the beginning, so when I took over there wasn’t a great deal to do in terms of the strategy. I knew what we had committed to was right for Lotus.’

Vision80 was created in the company’s 70th year, will be completed in its 80th and will see Lotus

go from being a one-platform, three-model manufacturer of low-volume sports cars to a multifaceted automotive company with four distinct and scalable platforms for both internal combustion engines and electric powertrains, offering everything from hypercars to SUVS, with Lotus Engineering core to the plan, too.

The Evija electric hypercar was the start of the Lotus journey under Geely, with the first examples of the 2000bhp cars scheduled for delivery later this year. Hand-made in its own production hall at Hethel, Evija is the halo car from which the next Lotus chapter will begin. Soon after comes Emira.

Replacing all three current Lotus models, Emira will need to appeal to the Elise customer and Exige 430 Cup owner alike. It will do this, explains Windle, by having more appeal to a wider customer base than any Lotus before it, and by being a world car, as all new Lotuses will be.

Mid-engined and taking much of its construction and design principles from the Evija, the Emira will be offered with a choice of powerplants: the latest incarnation of the Toyotasourced supercharged 3.5-litre V6 currently used by Lotus, and also a smaller capacity in-line four-cylinder engine that’s being sourced from a ‘world-renowned engine builder’. Both power units will be offered with a choice of manual and automatic transmissions.

Every new Lotus will be built to exacting standards never seen before from the company.

New production, assembly and paint halls are approaching completion at the Hethel site, with the first Emira prototypes already on the line. It’s this new drive for quality that also played a part in the demise of the Elise family. ‘They have been built the same way for the last 25 years, but we can’t meet our expected quality levels this way and upgrading the facility to do so wasn’t a long-term solution for us,’ explains Windle, who speaks of

Elise production ending with genuine sorrow.

As for its replacement, we’ll have to wait until 6 July and the Emira’s global reveal to get all the details. What we do know is that, beyond Emira, Lotus’s plans are hugely ambitious. Its new Premium Architecture platform will be scalable to allow it to suit the car, rather than the car having to suit the platform. This will provide the flexibility Lotus requires to offer the right cars for the right customers while still being able to stick to its core principles of low weight – every electric Lotus will have to weigh no more than if it had an IC engine explains Windle – and the very best dynamics.

Though designed and developed in Hethel, the models based on the Premium Architecture (an SUV and a Taycan rival to start) will be built in China. With regards to the recently announced Lotus-alpine agreement to develop a new electric sports car, Norfolk will lead the project with Dieppe feeding in and supporting. The resulting cars will be very different, according to Windle. ‘Lotus owns the IP to the platform, so it won’t only be restricted to Lotus or Alpine to use,’ he adds. And then there’s the hypercar platform that currently underpins the Evija and that Lotus has plans to utilise further still.

Lotus isn’t new to rebirths, revivals, new starts and big promises, but the speed and reach of the changes that Geely’s support has enabled suggests it has never been in safer hands.

‘IT WILL BECOME A MULTIFACETED COMPANY WITH FOUR DISTINCT PLATFORMS’