Evora Racecar

[Notorious L.R.G.]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

I don't understand the point of this at all. Turning the Evora into an Exige, eh?

This is what Lotus is all about. Name a street Lotus that did not have a race version.

Perhaps the M100 Elan, but Lotus was extra broke in those days, and it WAS a convertible.

[Murix]

I feel like I am going to upgrade both the cars in my garage. My MKV GTI for a MKVI R20 and my Elise for an Evora that I want to strip and tune like this. Ack. I love it.

[theob]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

I don't understand the point of this at all. Turning the Evora into an Exige, eh?

Exige, 2-11 => FIA GT4
Evora => FIA GT3

As simple as that!

[cornbeef]

more on the car and f1, it looks like lotus cars is acknowledging the f1 project. it also looks like the evora might not be supercharged...

Lotus Hits Frankfurt With Big Motorsport Plans

[Cthulhu]

Originally Posted by Notorious L.R.G.

This is what Lotus is all about. Name a street Lotus that did not have a race version.

Perhaps the M100 Elan, but Lotus was extra broke in those days, and it WAS a convertible.

Fair enough
but if Lotus ever makes a lightweight SUV, I'll cry.

[...m...]

Originally Posted by cornbeef

it also looks like the evora might not be supercharged...
Lotus Hits Frankfurt With Big Motorsport Plans

PistonHeads managed to collar Lotus development engineer extraordinaire and Type 124 project boss Gavan Kershaw to show us around the car.

"We haven't even finalised on the engine yet," says Gavan. "We could run it with a supercharger, but that would put us into a higher class, so we're also looking at a bored-out 3.7 or 3.8-litre naturally aspirated version.

So could any of the features of the racer - particularly the supercharger - make it to roadgoing Evoras? "Some of the aero bits and carbon fibre trim could theoretically make it onto roadgoing Evoras, but we want to to maintain the Evora's road-car focus, so it's pretty unlikely. As for a supercharged road car? A faster Evora is obviously a given if you look at Lotus's past, but it won't necessarily be supercharged. It depends on the race programme really. If we don't end up using the supercharger on the race car, it might not find its way to a road car, either."

[ads_green]

Lotus never give too much away about new models. They survive on getting cash sooner rather than later and if they confirm "a supercharged evora in 12m.." then they know some people will hold off and wait".

they did this with the S2 elise (most dealers were offering 0% no deposit finance on S1's the month before and I've found this to be a good indicator of a new interesting model on the horizon)... then again with the 111r... and again with the exige S.

The evora was announced as it was such a departure from the Elise based models it wasn't going to cause any impace. However now any new evora models will most likely go through the same process - you won't find out about them untill the very last minute.

It's a good buiness model if somewhat frustrating as a customer

As for the evora... My gut feel is that they will go supercharged. This is for several reasons:
- there is a dirty great big void in the engine bay that might as well say "insert supercharger here". The car was definately designed with it as a possibility.
- NA would require cracking open the engine... they may do this on a limited Evora RS version but the mainstream car will have an engine warrantied by Toyota so it makes sense to use the TRD unit already tried and tested.
- Lotus had nothing but hassles with any tuned NA Elise variant. the last of the S2 Sport 190's (which I was lucky to have one of) were great but it had been a very long and winding road to get to that point. By then it was to a degree too late and high powered Rover K's in the elise had a very bad reputation. People will put up with hassles on a GBP20k - GBP30k sports/track car however when you enter the market thats' potentially double or triple that amount people expectations are alot higher and little quirks are simple not acceptable.

I may be wrong (have been before!) but this feels "right" to me.