Autopian co-founder Beau Boeckmann is a sports car connoisseur, so running Porsche, Aston Martin, Ford, Lotus, Polestar, and many other dealerships is, naturally, a dream for him. And few moments in the dealership world are as exciting as when an all-new, driver-focused “product” rolls in from the factory. I know this because Beau’s excitement about the Lotus Emira, which had just recently been delivered to the dealership, was palpable. And the excitement only grew when we actually hopped into what will go down in history as the end of an era: Lotus’s final internal combustion engine sports car. And, at least for now, The End Of Lightness.
OK, to be clear: The Lotus Emira isn’t that light at over 3,100 pounds, but, for an electric car (Lotus plans to go all-electric in the relatively near future) with a reasonable range, that would be nothing. Plus, the Emira feels lighter than it is because Lotus engineers are absolute brainiacs when it comes to chassis tuning.
Here’s a look at my short drive with Beau in the new Lotus Emira (This is our new player, let us know how it works for you)
Lotus Cars is the sister company to Lotus Engineering, an engineering consulting firm that lives and breathes chassis dynamics. Seriously, check out the homepage for Lotus Engineering:
Suffice it to say that, when a bunch of vehicle-dynamics geeks get together to develop a car with their company’s logo, things tend to get good. Very good.
Autopian cofounder Beau obviously sells Lotus vehicles, so I was pretty concerned that I’d have no choice but to rag on a car that he would then have to market. But luckily, by the grace of car-gods in Hethel, Norwich, UK, the Emira is an absolute gem, and damn near every other automotive outlet agrees.
Beau introduces me to the new Lotus by showing it right next to an Evora, the vehicle’s predecessor. You can see the Evora below, just behind me as I’m listening to Beau explain why the new Emira is exactly what Lotus needed: A little bit of extra funding to actually make the car look beautiful both inside and out:
And I do mean inside and out. The old Evora’s interior was, per Beau, not amazing, and looking at it in the photo below, I’d say it’s only “fine.”
The Emira’s cabin is legitimately nice, plus it’s easy to get into and comfortable. One could legitimately daily-drive this car, and that’s saying something for a Lotus.
Actually driving the thing on the streets of Van Nuys was a little frustrating. The mid-mounted 400 horsepower 3.5-liter Supercharged Toyota-sourced V6 makes the car feel quick, and though it sounds fun when approaching its rather low 7,200-ish redline, by and large the engine is rather tame aurally. This meant we were tempted to keep the revs high all the time, though the biggest temptation was rowing through one of the most satisfying six-speed manual transmission shifters I’ve ever experienced. The way the thing just snicks into gear made us want to shift far more than we needed to.
But alas, the traffic in the valley, along with the low speed limit and the pothole-d streets (the car’s ride is remarkably good, it’s worth noting) meant Beau and I were basically doing the automotive equivalent of edging, hammering the pedal, then hitting the brakes, then hammering the pedal — never quite reaching nirvana.
The good news was that we were able to shift a lot, plus we saw the glorious supercharger bypass valve in action in our rearview mirror. The bad news is that we never really got to test out the car’s cornering limits, but that’s a good thing on public streets.
This is one of those cars that’s really begging for a “hot shoe” driver and a test track to really see what it’s got, but for the everyday driver, Beau and I got you covered. Check out the video above as I jokingly show Beau the ropes of how to write a car review. Some critical steps include:
- Driving like such a jackass on public roads that your partner hates you. Justify doing this by saying “I have to test the car’s handling limits.”
- Say things about the car’s handling that you don’t fully understand. Talk about steering feel, snap oversteer, and about how linear the brakes are.
- Never say “handles like it’s on rails.”
- Always write down your thoughts right after your drive. You will otherwise forget, and then your car review will be horrible.
- Take photos of the car so you don’t have to rely on press photos
There’s actually a lot more to car-review writing. Typically you want to interview an expert, you want to shoot some social media content, you want to score a “breakout story” in addition to the review itself, and on and on. But I’m just kidding around in the video, as this wasn’t meant to be a serious car review: Just a short, fun drive with Beau to give readers our first impression of a magnificent machine that represents the End Of An Era.
That Evora interior is practically the sweet spot of early aughts simplicity meets soft touch material excellence. Analog gauges. Simple buttons. No touchscreen. Stick in the middle. Mechanical parking brake. Peak driver’s car in my opinion.
Also, the “edging” comment sounds more Tantric as once you get off the streets and on a course (say Laguna Seca given the locale) I think the finish would be well worth the build up.
Lotus is smart enough to want Toyota engines in their cars.
Except the other engine is Mercedes….
I feel Beau also taught you a few lessons in mgmt/ownership. Like don’t let anyone who does what you said drive a vehicle you own and want to sell. The old owner at the Dodge dealership I tried to sell at got the Dealerships 1 and only Dodge Stealth Turbo and too us salesmen for a ride but only he drove. He got a ticket doing 160mph which he posted on the cars windshield in the showroom with the rule no test drives without a credit check and interview BY HIM.
BTW shouldn’t that be Beau and I?
Oh the player just showed JT and his Changli.
And I have not seen the discount Autopian members get on buying cars at Beaus place?
You never forget the first time you get to rort around in an exotic car. Mine was a Lotus.
During semester winter break in 1976, I headed home from school for Xmas and to pick up a few bucks working at the garage that was my after school and summer job all through high school and summers during college.
As I was preparing to lock up one evening, a blood red, low-slung door stop of a car wheeled up to the blacked out pumps. A regular customer I’d known for years (whose daily driver was a Jensen Intercepter) popped out of the driver side of what I recognized as a Lotus Esprit.
I switched on the Super pump and filled his tank while he recounted that he was test driving the Lotus with an eye on buying. I finished up with the Esprit then locked up the station while he told me about his day. Then, as I was admiring the car, he invited me for a quick run up a nearby fou-lane. I was shocked when he tossed me the keys, but you don’t hesitate in those moments.
I fired the Esprit up and gingerly let out the clutch as we slow rolled into traffic, through a rotary, and onto the highway. Let it run, let it run, he yelled. So I did.
Traffic was steady and I got plenty of practice shifting and weaving around double nickel knuckle draggers. Finally, we broke clear and I could really open it up. My daily was a ‘69 Superbee with a 440, so the Lotus didn’t feel especially fast, but it was smooth and quick and vastly different from anything else I’d driven. Not to mention lower. Too soon it was time shut it down and head back. Been a Lotus fan ever since.
DT looks like Jake Hoyt in Training Day. But, instead of becoming LAPD, he’s becoming an LA Cool Guy.
Video would not let me easily opt out of jumping immediately to the next video. “Watch more” is fine, but it might be a better idea to simply let folks watch what they selected.
As for the vid…I came out of it liking Beau more. He seems to really love and live cars. The analogy of the ICE motors being alive while electric cars are machines is apt.
And both B&D seemed to really like the car. Not in they “hey this is cool because we got to use it in a video” way, but in a genuine, emotional way.
Chrome in Windows. The video starts, but about 20 seconds in it attempts to autoload Mercedes’ train video but just sits there and looks at me.
By the way, just sent in my final Emira configuration form to my local-ish dealer. I’m a wee bit excited.
Edit – never mind. Just had to X out of the autoload. I’m simple.
No video at all – Brave on Android :/
Video fail. Limited to that little inline thumbnail view. Clicking on the green Watch More banner just reloads the page. No sound. Using DuckDuckGo and Safari browser on iPhone.
Same issue, using Chrome on Android
Same here. Firefox on iOS. Needs a full screen button, too.
Ok, it should now just take you to YouTube.
No it doesn´t. Firefox and Windows 10.
Huh, there’s a delay. On the back-end it shows this updated, but it doesn’t update on the site yet.
Try it… now.
Full self playing video, (beta). Let the users test it.
Kidding, you at least don’t pretend it’s a finished product.
Keep up the good work.
lol!
Can confirm that clicking the video thumbnail now takes me to YouTube. Not as elegant as inline, but functional.
As a random bonus, all my inline ads are now in Spanish. And no, I don’t speak Spanish.
Same. Video won’t load. Using Chrome on a desktop.
True car person
Beau: you mean we’ve been in dork mode the whole time LOL
i got nothing. no watch now tab. Weird.
The last stick? They’ll be back.
oh look, the real Supra 😛
Toyota needs to use this supercharged GR V6 in some of their GR cars. GR Camry, GR Avalon, GR Sienna, GR Rav4, GR Highlander, RX-F, ES-F, you name it.
That supercharger is made by Edelbrock, but it’s not listed on Edelbrock’s site. I wonder if you could procure that supercharger somehow and install it on your swagger wagon…
Just order the parts from Lotus…
Overnight from Hethel?
And edging reference in a DT article? Had to go back and double check that it wasn’t Torch that wrote this.
The Emira looks awesome, but I have to disagree a little bit on the interior. It looks very very boring in there, on an otherwise exciting car. Though I’m sure it’s welcome to people who have had to deal with some fairly uncomfortable past Lotus interiors.
I kinda stole the reference from Jason.
*grits teeth trying to restrain from bad joke, slowly breaking*
L-l-looks like he’s rubbing off on you!
I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it.
Edging you say?
Thanks. Just reminded me of something the Col has to attend to.
BTW, this LOTUS looks great, nice story.
DT has a girlfriend now. We might even start to see pop culture references.
Like Coke vs. Pepsi?
Gotta start slow. We’ll work up to Mr. Pibb vs Dr. Pepper in the next episode.
“What happened to Tab and Diet Rite”*
*Exclusive content for Autopian members
Hey, it had to come eventually.
What you did there. I see it.
I see we have a voyeur in the crowd
The ‘Watch Now’ button is now Autopian green, which is nice, but it does block the captions. It also blocks the bar that allows you to jump to a specific part of the video.
Can the button be moved outside the video area?
I don’t see true CC on the video, just lightlights. Also I don’t see a CC icon
Now it you click watch more, it take you to the a new tab for the same article 🙂
Apologies – not captions in the CC sense, but for example at the beginning of the video where the words “LOTUS EXIGE 350 SPORT” appear in the bottom left; the Watch More button overlaps some of the lettering.
“ plus we saw the glorious turbo bypass valve in action in our rearview mirror. ”
Supercharger.
It’s the supercharger bypass.
It’s mounted on the front of a massive supercharger.
Right! A turbocharger bypass on a supercharged engine… Come on, DT, get it together! (Fixed!)
It is a damn cool thing to see in the rear view mirror though.
The Evora 400 and Exige 400 had a similar set-up, but at a jaunty angle. I don’t think any other car lets you see if you’re making boost with a view of the actual mechanism rather than a gauge.
want to watch, use duckduckgo on a mobile device…don’t want to watch badly enough to use another browser/ app.
I went back and clicked on Watch More and the player popped up in a new browser tab and played perfectly with no ads at all. (some are ok and expected). And the video quality and content of your first official was good.
I think that was playing on YouTube.
Am I the only one that actually thinks the Evora’s interior looks way nicer? The Emira’s looks like it would be right at home in a Civic or Golf. The Evora’s at least has some unique colors and surfaces. The Emira’s is soooo boring.
Have you experienced Evora interior in person. That photo is misleading. The Emira interior is spartan but efficient and well-integrated. I think that is appropriate for a Lotus.
Love the video, but I also gave up before the end. I was in the middle of the 6th ad at 9 minutes of video and I was done. I know you need the ads, but is that many really necessary? And is there (sorry, totally ignorant question coming) any way to choose when they cut in? It’s super distracting when right in the middle of your lesson about Lotus Engineering it cuts out mid sentence, I know I have seen videos that seem to have ads at convenient times, but that might be coincidence.
I should also add that I love Lotus, and according to Lotus, the plural is just Lotus, or Lotus cars, none of that Lotuses crap. I find it a bit pretentious to go with look at all these Lotus! So I always went with Lotus cars when I had my Elise. Very excited to see they did a good job on this car, because yeah like Beau said, driving any past Lotus cars is definitely a huge compromise.
There aren’t supposed to be this many ads, I think the wrong button was checked or something was miscommunicated. Sorry for the experience.
Figured as much. Y’all are doing great things, we’re with you through the growing pains.
My experience was similar (Firefox on macOS): disabled AdBlock Pro to see the video and got two Grammarly ads in the first minute.
However, at that point I navigated away to another video (Mercedes driving the locomotive) and when I went back to the Emira video there were no more ads at all.
Re: Beau’s point – an EV is an appliance.
I also had to turn off adblocking (AdBlock Plus in my case) to even see the video player, but it was cued up to some crap AI video, and even on a forced reload, wouldn’t show me the article video.
All six static ads on the page were for Summit Racing, so at least the right demographic even if a bit redundant.
Yeah, this was a super weird quirk and I saw it as well. Our video partner is updating the player to respond to different things people pointing out and it’s causing some temporary issues. If you reload that weird AI video thing should be gone.
Strange, I turned off Adblock and didn’t see any ads. I was expecting a pre-roll or something, I went to the 9min mark without seeing any ads. Maybe all my ads will come at the end?
Closing the page and coming back to it got me the right video, but I also had the issue of five ads in quick succession in the middle of the video. It was ad, ten seconds of video, ad, video, ad, etc.
I want one. So. much.
Well the video did play but let’s just say, it needs refinement.
The video was totally eliminated by my AdBlock on my PC. So I turned off AdBlock. I got a VRBO, Papa Johns, and some video game ad 5 times in the first one minute of watching. Needless to say, I stopped watching.
Also, there was no Maximize button that I saw to make the video go fullscreen.
Sounds like we’ve got a bit of work to do!
Thank you for the feedback.
Content is great, but yeah the delivery is a bit rough for now.
I had the same issue, I got 2 ads before the video even started playing, and then 2 more ads for every 10-15 seconds of video time. Plus that super annoying bouncing “watch more” thing that *only* goes away during ads.
The ad server pounced on our unprotected PCs like fresh meat in a max security prison.
Haha. Oh god
The video game character was cutting off his own arm with a chainsaw and screaming. I’m glad I wasn’t in an office.
Sorry to both of you! That wasn’t the experience we planned for this player so I think there’s an issue. I’m working with our team to get it back to the way it’s suppsed to work.
I understand. I roll out my software into live motor racing conditions and sometimes it doesn’t work like the test case. I’m looking forward to the end product.
Ad issue should be fixed.
I used control+command (macOS) to get a menu for the video player. On a Windows PC you should be able to right-click on the video (avoiding the controls) and get the same menu.
That control allows you to maximize the player to full screen, but with this particular video the resolution wasn’t up to snuff: it looked blocky at full screen.
@David, et al – this is not a grumble; it’s feedback for future efforts. 🙂
*facepalm*
control-[click on the touchpad], not control-command
Full-screen was fine on the YouTube version.
Just letting y’all know the player doesn’t even show up using Firefox on a Mac.