First Drive: Lotus Evora Posted 2010/08/19 @ 4:00 PM By Myles Kornblatt
This is the first time Lotus has laid out carpeting in a car in over 15 years. Well, that’s not completely true. The Europa S was a Lotus with a few creature comforts, but few ever left Europe. So we're excited to get behind the wheel of the first Lotus in a very long time that was designed with everyday usability in mind.
Before we even turn the key, the appearance tells us this is the kind of car we’re going to like. Our Evora is mild on the outside but wild on the inside. The grey exterior paint with grey wheels is downplaying the car’s exotic looks, while the fire orange leather interior almost acts like a Matador encouraging to drive the car hard.
There’s a similar dual personality from the exhaust note. At idle and around town, the Evora sounds almost like the Toyota Camry from which Lotus gets the V6 engine. But get heavy with the right foot, raise the rpms above 3000, and the sports side comes to life. Under spirited conditions, the Evora sounds like a classic Italian V6 with a little muscle car in the background.
Making all this noise is a 3.5-liter 276 hp Toyota V6. We may joke that this is the most fun someone can have with a Camry engine, but it is the exact right fit for Lotus. It provides a solid base for Lotus to work its engineering magic. Lotus lays its hands on the Toyota block before it ever goes into the Evora, and they retune it, including a 6 hp increase.
The resulting car has a better power to weight ratio than a Porsche Cayman S. It is also significantly stiffer than just about any other sports car out there. The chassis is a three-part design that starts with an aluminum tub for the driver. Then a rear suspension unit with engine is bonded to the rear, and an independent suspension unit is bonded up front. The result is structure 160% more rigid than the already stiff Elise.
Stiffness is great talk for engineering fans, but what the Evora does on the road is a driver’s dream. Because flex is not an issue, the suspension only needs to be set up to make sure the tires are sticking to the pavement. The best place to prove this was on the winding country roads where we took our test car. The six-speed manual (the automatic version has not been released yet) combined with the go-cart-like road feel made this one of the more fun cars we’ve driven in a while. It has the raw likeability of the Elise, but the Evora’s manners are much closer to a GT car.
Inside we’ve already mentioned that we find the color scheme ‘encouraging’ to the driver. The brushed aluminum panels that house most of the knobs and buttons are a subtle reminder of this car’s lightweight nature. The company famous for lightness is not going to add any unnecessary fluff to the Evora, so the inside feels spartan. The overall impression isn’t cheap or home-built, it just feels minimalist like the Audi R8.
The front seats are sporty and long-distance supportive. This is the 2+2 model, but the back seats are only for kids who have been trained to never complain. It is nifty to call this the only mid-engined sports car with a back seat, but Lotus readily admits the rear is best used for extra storage.
At a $74,675 base price, the Evora starts about $13k above the Cayman S. There are plenty of good reasons for the extra money, including the semi-functional back seats, better power-weight ratio, and significantly stiffer chassis, but probably our best justification is exclusivity. Only 2,000 Evoras will be produced annually, and about 600 will be sent to North America. This means the Evora not only runs in fast company, but in elite company as well.
Stiffness is great talk for engineering fans, but what the Evora does on the road is a driver’s dream. Because flex is not an issue, the suspension only needs to be set up to make sure the tires are sticking to the pavement. The best place to prove this was on the winding country roads where we took our test car. The six-speed manual (the automatic version has not been released yet) combined with the go-cart-like road feel made this one of the more fun cars we’ve driven in a while. It has the raw likeability of the Elise, but the Evora’s manners are much closer to a GT car.
