More Lotusy than a Lotus Emira!

[Derek182]

One of my customers is a serial Lotus owner of Esprits, Elan, Elise, 2 Evoras and he had a deposit on an Emira I4 which he has cancelled after a recent test drive, he did like it but lost patience with the endless delays and price increases.
This week I took him out in my A110GT and let him have a drive as well, he was very impressed.
To him a Lotus should have great steering, good ride and be small and light - all of which the Alpine does better than the Emira hence him saying it was "more Lotusy than a Lotus Emira!
Plus the Emira being £20k more expensive whereas if Lotus had stuck to their pricing it would have been much closer.

[Derek182]

My customer had similar reservations about the gear change in the Emira I4, wasn't a deal breaker for him as he wasn't looking at track use and thought it was ok for the road but did say the Alpine's gear change was far quicker.
I think Lotus had a few problems adapting the Merc engine to mid engine use, it runs lower power in the Emira than the A45, presumably less boost, due to cooling problems maybe? Not sure why the gear change would be worse though, I assume it electrically operated not relying on cables or linkages?
Lotus certainly took a very long time to bring the I4 to market.