A Lotus to save Hethel

Lotus has endured torrid times. Could a new sports EV in the mould of past greats be its saviour? STEVE CROPLEY thinks so

- STEVE CROPLEY

Car lovers know a true Lotus when they see one. The brand's core values are among the clearest of any marque on the road, harking back nearly 80 years to the earliest days of Colin Chapman.

A real Lotus is low, sporty and compact, with a confident stance that implies fine driving qualities. The exterior shape may not always be consistent with that of its predecessors (look at the differences between the Elan and the Esprit for evidence of that), but the styling always carries a delicacy that speaks of low weight, compactness, efficiency and a forward-thinking openness to new technology.

From 1965 to 2022, every new Lotus embodied these values and was built in Lotus’s Hethel factory, opened when Chapman acquired a former RAF base south of Norwich and moved the business there so it could have its own test track. Lotus life moved on, often through thick and thin, because, throughout its eight decades, the company’s affairs have always been volatile.

This year that volatility peaked. Four years before, Geely, Lotus’s Chinese owner, had started applying the marque’s famous yellow roundel to a range of UK-designed, Wuhan-built, large EVs unlike any Lotus before. Having aimed at 150,000 units per year, Geely found it could sell only a small fraction of that number, and it drew criticism for misunderstanding the soul of Lotus while confusing customers and loyalists about the company’s future.

Meanwhile, the Hethel-built Emira sports car, the Evora-based current model billed at its 2022 launch as the last-ever combustion-engined Lotus, had been selling moderately well (5000-plus units in 2024) but not well enough for the Chinese ownership. Even slower sales by rivals such as Alpine’s A110 indicated that mid-priced two-seater sports cars simply weren't as fashionable as they used to be.