There is a new Lotus position.
There have been many since
the visionary, mercurial Colin
Chapman built his first car in
a garage in 1948. “Simplify,
then add lightness” was his most celebrated
maxim, a policy espoused on 1962’s epochal
Lotus 25, whose “fully stressed” monocoque
chassis made it the template for all Formula
One racing cars thereafter. Chapman was one
of the English garagistes derided by Enzo
Ferrari, but he could play the Old Man at
his own game and his name and engineer-
ing retain a powerful brand equity in 2019.
The company’s new majority shareholder,
Chinese behemoth Geely, will be hoping to
leverage that immutability and the company’s
emotional pull as it sinks billions into Lotus’
latest turnaround plan. The new boss is Phil
Popham, a former Jaguar Land Rover board
director and recent CEO of Sunseeker, lured
back into the automotive firestorm armed
with a ten-year product master plan for a
British sports car company that should be
selling rather more than 1,600 cars per year.
“There is a real passion and desire for
the brand,” he tells GQ. “Awareness is
high, whether it’s via Bond movies, Colin
Chapman’s legacy or F1. Lotus means
different things to different people, but
familiarity with what we do today is fairly
low. People who have visited us here before
ask if this is another false dawn, but the new
hypercar is a huge statement of intent. It’s
low volume, yes, but it’s extremely high-
tech. It showcases what Lotus can do and it
isn’t a cheap programme.”
It’s called Evija, which loosely translated
means “the first in existence”. It’s a cool
name and follows the company’s estab-
lished nomenclature (Elite, Esprit, Elise et
al), but as a mega-horsepower, pure electric
car it’s also the latest entry in the new per-
formance car paradigm. Like Pininfarina’s
lovely Battista or the Rimac Automobili
C Two, the Evija’s power output is almostLotus Evija
Powertrain Around
1,960bhp pure electric
all-wheel drive
Performance
0-62mph, less than
3 secs; top speed,
more than 200mph
Production run
No more than 130
Price Around
£2 million
Contact lotuscars.comNeed
to knowbut not quite 2,000bhp, an absurd figure that’s made possible by the
torque vectoring possibilities of a motor on each wheel and the energy
generated by an enormous bank of batteries. The powertrain is being
codeveloped by Williams Advanced Engineering, so it’s blue chip.
It’s also uncommonly beautiful. Lotus is rarely given the credit it
deserves for its visual daring, but in the Evija the team has pushed
the boundaries to create something that balances showbiz spectacle
with classical proportion. It’s made entirely of carbon fibre, which
helps promote chassis integrity while minimising weight, but also
gives the designers room to manoeuvre. With a cabin set well within
its bodywork, there are references to classic endurance racers, there’s
a race-bred inboard suspension and an intriguingly sculptural surface
language. Given its performance potential, its aerodynamics have
been finessed using F1-standard CFD ( computational fluid dynam-
ics, since you ask), the air flowing not just over and around it, but
also through it. The Evija’s rear is especially striking, achieving a
form that’s akin to a Barbara Hepworth sculpture. Not an analogy
you make every day.
Lotus chief designer Russell Carr is also having fun with the
interior. “We machine into the carbon fibre fractions of a millimetre,
inlay metal and lacquer over the top. It’s 21st-century marquetry
and positions us in the lineage of British craftsmanship. The Evija
sits at that junction where motorsport and aerospace meets
Savile Row.”The Evija achieves a form that’s akin
to a Barbara Hepworth sculptureThe Evija is made of carbon fibre and references classic endurance racers09-19CarsLotusDucati.indd 110 27/06/2019 12:14
114 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2019