The magic of Lotus
A LOT OF PEOPLE are quite sniffy about Lotus. Sure, they had a terrible reputation for reliability in-period but, once it was properly sorted, my first Elan was as reliable as any car I have ever owned, for several years averaging 10,000 miles annually and never once coming home on a trailer. Yes, they are made of plastic and use proprietary parts, but aren’t true enthusiasts meant to be able to rise above such things and judge a car solely on what it offers as a driving experience?
For me the greatest quality of Lotus has always been its accessibility. Before you start thinking that I have just copied and pasted last month’s column about hybrids, the Lotus offers something slightly different: a pure driving experience that you would have to spend many times the money to replicate with any other marque. Hell, when the original Elan was new, no amount of money could buy a better A- and B-road sports car, because there wasn’t one.
That habit of rendering prices and values irrelevant became a hallmark of all of the best cars to come out of Hethel. Many years ago I was asked to drive a Ferrari F430 1000 miles to Brescia (via Mulhouse, naturally) and it was a fabulous car. When I got there, the Ferrari people asked what I thought and I replied that it was like a big Elise. They looked askance, but I had meant it as a massive compliment. I did have an S1 Elise of my own, of course. It cost me £12,000 back in 2004, and I reckon that, even at that point – long before the economy went down the tubes and the market went through the roof – it would have cost me at least four times that to acquire a comparable driving experience elsewhere.
When Lotus aked us if we wanted a look at the new Evija hypercar, we leapt at the chance to get under its skin. With Geely at the tiller, these are exciting times for Lotus, with the potential for the greatest sustained stability that the company has ever known. But for us the most important thing was to see whether the new car and the company’s new direction are laced with the correct DNA. What better way to do so than to get the Evija in a room with its most illustrious forebears?