The Vehicles Earth

A little over 18 months ago Lotus was whisking dust sheet after dust sheet off five new sports cars at the 2010 Paris motor show and waxing lyrical about an expanded range that would kick off with a new Esprit supercar. They’re all (hopefully) still to come, but all the hype has actually taken the spotlight off the existing Lotus range, a line-up that’s been consistently fettled and finely tuned. There's a more powerful engine for the Elise, and a new gearbox, a new Exige (plus an Exige Roadster), and a limited-run Evora GTE that’s sold like proverbial warm buns. Plus the car the GTE's based on, the Evora, has been subjected to a raft of quality updates.

An Evora S, with the 2+2 seating option, the new IPS automatic gearbox, and the MY12 quality improvements passed through the CAR office recently, and frankly, we loved it. While the world’s automotive media focuses on the new 991-gen 911, the Evora has been a bit forgotten about. But while the latest Porsche icon has lost a little of its emotive feel (especially through the steering), that’s exactly what this Lotus delivers. So the order is in and we’re going to run one for six months… (A manual, mind, not the IPS).

We’ve opted for a £60,550 Evora S over the standard £51,550 Evora, which means a supercharger boosts the 3.5-litre V6 engine’s 276bhp and 258lb ft to 345bhp and 295lb ft. And besides four-tenths being trimmed from the 0-62mph time (now a supercar-rivalling 4.6sec) the Evora goes from being a fast car to a properly quick one.

There’s more than just extra power too: you get the Sport Pack that’s otherwise a £1200 option on the standard Evora. It includes a Sport button for a sharper throttle response, a higher rev limit and a louder exhaust note, plus upgraded cross-drilled brakes, red brake calipers and an engine oil cooler.

To that our 2+0 Evora S has become a 2+2 with the optional £1900 rear seats – many of the CAR team have kids so they’re all keen to find out if it can be used as a family car. At least that’s the excuse accompanying the barrage of requests I’m already getting from the Pollards, Barrys and Chiltons keen to borrow it at weekends.

We’ve got the Tech Pack too, which for £2800 adds an upgraded hi-fi system, a 7in touch-screen sat-nav, Bluetooth, MP3 connectivity, cruise control, a tyre pressure monitoring system and rear parking sensors. Another £350 bundles in a reversing camera, and powered door mirrors are the same again, and our car has the Premium Pack Sport for another £2500, so there’s heated leather buckets (ours are Ebony Black with red piping) and extra leather on the doors, armrest, centre console, and footwells.

As for the exterior, we’ve opted for Amethyst Grey Premium Paint (£1500) which has a lovely purple tinge, and because I have a strange affinity for darkened alloys, a rather substantial £2200 has gone towards forged Gloss Black Design Wheels. With these the front wheels grow from 18s to 19s, the rears from 19s to 20s, and the standard Pirellis P Zeros become grippier P Zero Corsas.

All in it’s £72,150, which seemed like a lot… until I had a little play on Porsche’s configurator for the new 911 Carrera. That’s got 345bhp and prices start at £71,449. But metallic paint is £801, tyre pressure monitoring is £437, it costs £931 to paint the wheels black (and you need a £971 20in alloy wheel upgrade to do so), rear parking sensors are £397, a sports exhausts is £1772, cruise control is £267, and heated seats are £320.

At this point some of you will be scouring your nails into your desk and shouting that Lotus can’t match the quality of Porsche, but let’s park those thoughts until our car actually arrives. It’ll be here in a couple of weeks. I can’t wait. And neither, it seems, can Messrs Pollard, Barry or Chilton…

By Ben Pulman