EVORALUTION

The Evora was a calm new direction ahead of a turbulent era at Lotus and its impact is still being felt

-  Glen Waddington

Fair to say I've always been a Lotus Elise fan. Lightweight, apparently simple yet deceptively, even archly intelligent in concept, it redefined Lotus for its era. It's incredible to think that the Elise went into production fully three decades ago, as close to the launch of the Europa (Lotus's first mid-engined road car) as it is to today. But after ten years of development that brought ever more hardcore options such as the track-ready Exige, plus the evolutionary, legislation-led S2 that was enabled via collaboration with GM, Lotus sought the prospect of a broader market beyond minimalist, bare-knuckle sports cars. It needed a car that people who wore suits rather than hairshirts could drive daily. The Elise-based Europa S, developed hastily for Lotus's Malaysian then-backer Proton, just wasn't cutting it. It needed the Evora.

'This was the last project of people who'd had a direct connection with Colin Chapman,' says Russell Carr, design chief at Lotus during development of the Evora and in that chair again since 2014. 'We were given our objective by Mike Kimberley; we used to receive faxes that were like reading GP notes.

Kimberley had been a guiding light at Lotus during the 1970s, working under company founder Colin Chapman. He'd returned as acting CEO in 2006, and the Evora project was kicked off in the autumn of that year. 'It was a fast-track programme. We had a scale model by Christmas and spent the whole of 2007 developing the theme. Mike's vision statement was that it should be visually stunning, would have modern usability, high performance through light weight, be compact, and that form must follow function. He would also reiterate the term "plus 2". It had to have rear seats.