Evora Detail Pics

[Stig]

Hi all,

I bumped into an old mate of mine at the motorshow who, it turns out, works for Lotus. So I took the opportunity to get up close and personal with it and take a few pics.

Some may know that I wasn't that taken by the looks of it (I saw it last week too), but it's growing on me. That said, I still didn't come away feeling 'wow' - but it's a great step forward. A bit bigger inside than I'd initially thought, but definitely small kids in the rear only (IsoFix points in there too

As you probably know, it uses a 3.5l engine (Toyota supplied). The chassis was a neat setup with 3 sections. The front and rear are steel and bolt to the cockpit section which uses the tried and tested extruded aluminium sections. The great thing is, if you have a 'moment', you can simply unbolt the front or rear and replace it. Much more economical than the Elise where chassis damage was very hard to put right.

Anyway - see pics below...

Chassis rear section


Chassis centre section


Chassis front section


Design looked more cohesive this time



Room for two (small ones) in the rear. Evora has IsoFix fittings too



Dash well designed and looks great


Dial feature very nice indeed


Reversing camera and obligotary sat-nav


Seats look comfortable, but supportive. Remains to be seen how well they perform on longer trips


Door card detail


3.5l V6 from Toyota (and no doubt Lotus fettled)


Rear styling looks very good



Still not sure about that roof line - I think colour will affect it alot, I'm betting black would be stunning


Nice Lotus detail on indicator LEDs


Line between quarterlight and rear window has caused quite a lot of discussion (both internal and external it would seem)


Now I just need to see if I can blag a test drive

[Bombjack]

Very interesting pics, thanks for sharing.

[alanmoss]

Good pics, however I would like to mention that only the rear section of the Chassis is steel (something to do with NVH), the front section is aluminium. The front is also a "sacrificial" unit and Lotus have been able to replace the front on two test crashed cars in two days using two people.

[Exneda]

Well the ergonomics of the car look really good except for one little tiny issue: the door mirrors electric contactor looks to be located in a very tight spot!

Edited by Exneda on Saturday 2nd August 21:29

[bencollins]

Bombjack said:

Very interesting pics, thanks for sharing.

+1

[Foolish Dave]

Looks really nice.
I'll wait for Castles to get a demo car in and have a proper look, and probably for the 1st round of production tweaks and power hikes

Wonder what the luggage space is like - that chassis with the engine in doesn't look like it'll have that much room compared to the Elise, let along for 2 adults and 2 kids for a weekend in the South of France.

[andy_s]

Testing:

http://www.motorauthority.com/news/news/engineers-...

[The Pits]

I'm of the view that this car would be superb to drive and own. However I'm starting to think that it could do with a bit more power as standard. 276 won't be enough at 1350kg to make many headlines. I guess you could argue that this isn't bad for the entry level car (ie boxster not boxster S) but as was mentioned on another thread, Toyota do another, direct injection version of this engine that puts out over 300 bhp. I wonder if we here on pistonheads could club together to persuade Lotus to fit that engine as standard?

[Tuna]

The Pits said:

I'm of the view that this car would be superb to drive and own. However I'm starting to think that it could do with a bit more power as standard. 276 won't be enough at 1350kg to make many headlines. I guess you could argue that this isn't bad for the entry level car (ie boxster not boxster S) but as was mentioned on another thread, Toyota do another, direct injection version of this engine that puts out over 300 bhp. I wonder if we here on pistonheads could club together to persuade Lotus to fit that engine as standard?

It's been done to death on the other threads. However, as standard it apparently out-performs the Cayman-S, sits in a lower emissions band and still manages to return 30mpg. Quite a headline grabbing performance for a completely new car.

[DannyT]

I'm off to my local dealer for the launch night next week, and am very very tempted. However, although the headline price is £45k, but once you make the car motorshow spec (as the first 200 will be give or take a few details) you are in the region of £52-£55k. Suddenly it does not "feel" very good value and I am put off. I know you can't compare new to used, but in my head once I'm in that territory of money there are a number of very special things that I could also have.

Decisions decisions decisons...

[Tuna]

If you option it up, it does cost more of course - depends if you feel strongly about auto-folding wing mirrors and a DVD player :-) By comparison, I think the full options list for the Cayman goes somewhere north of 17K all in.

I've put the details of the options list on the Evora Knol here so you can see what you're getting (shameless plug - please feel free to contribute, comment or link to it)

[LotusExcelSA]

Don't like the rear seats, why not go for a high centre pillar like the Excel?

Supportive and can be used as an arm rest, the evora rear seats look as about supportive as a pickup truck bench seat