First Drive: Lotus Emira 2022 Review

There will be people who are sad the Lotus Emira even exists. Not for what it is, you understand, but what it signifies. For it is an end of an era for Lotus, one that arguably started back in 1930, for that was the year in which the Austin Seven chassis that Colin Chapman modified to create the first Lotus in 1948 was built. Think of all those great cars that have come in the intervening years: Elite, Elan, Esprit, Elise and so many more. But while some had four cylinders and others six or eight, some were rear-drive but a few were front-wheel-drive, and some were turbocharged while others were supercharged or naturally aspirated, every one of them came with a petrol-powered internal combustion engine, at least until the Evija hypercar turned up.

But the Emira is the last. There will be no Lotus plug-in hybrid to bridge the gap between its petrol past and EV future: every new Lotus from now on, including the already announced Eletre SUV, will be all-electric from the start.

It comes to market with a choice of powertrains: the more expensive Emira V6 has a carry-over 3.5-litre motor with a supercharger attached delivering just over 406PS (299kW) to the rear wheels via a six-speed manual gearbox, though an eight-speed conventional automatic is available too, if that’s what you really want.

The second engine is the 2.0-litre inline-four produced by Mercedes-AMG for use in the A45 S hot hatch and its other small performance cars. And while it now produces 425PS (313kW) in the A-Class (and, extraordinarily, soon to develop 477PS (351kW) all by itself in the forthcoming C63 AMG (whose output it further boosted by a hybrid drive)), in the Emira it has been scaled back to ‘just’ 365PS (268kW), otherwise it would have been more powerful than the V6.

How long the V6 will survive is not clear, but the Euro 7 emissions regulations that will likely kill it could be here as soon as 2025, and as the waiting list for one is already two years long, you might want to register an interest now rather than be disappointed later on. When the V6 does die, there will be plenty of scope for it to be replaced by a more powerful iteration of the AMG engine, all of which come with a double-clutch gearbox and no manual option.

Powertrain aside, customers have also to decide whether to choose Touring or Sport specification for their cars. Lotus has remained resolutely ‘pure’ about this car, meaning that the active damping system that might provide a wide range of ride and handling characteristics is nowhere to be seen. So those wanting to use their Emira primarily on the road will choose a Touring, with softer suspension and Goodyear Eagle tyres, while those intending to use theirs on the circuit should consider a more stiffly sprung Sport equipped with Michelin Pilot Cup 2 trackday rubber.

The very first cars are all fully equipped ‘First Edition’ variants with many additional items of equipment which would otherwise be optional, none of which need delay us unduly here save the limited slip differential. In the past you get the feeling that Lotus chassis engineers would have rather crawled over broken glass than fit such a device to one of their cars – the Esprit Sport 300 was a rarer than rare exception and all the better for it – but there’s one in play here and its merits, or otherwise, we’ll be arriving at shortly.

So, the Emira has quite a job to perform, not just replacing the Evora, but representing all Lotus sports cars until a new generation can be brought on line. And it could hardly have chosen a tougher part of the market in which to compete, priced as it is to meet the Porsche 718 Cayman head on, and significantly ahead of the brilliant, ultra-light Alpine A110. A sign of supreme confidence in the product, or an unjustified folly? We are about to find out…

Perhaps we should address first what the Emira is not, which is a genuinely all-new car, though it is pretty close. Dig deep enough beneath Russell Carr’s supremely well-judged lines and you’ll find if not the bare bones of the Evora, then more than enough strands of Evora DNA to betray its true parentage. The Emira is derived from the Evora, insofar as they had to start somewhere and instead of that place being ‘scratch’, it was the Evora. Today its Toyota-supplied powertrain survives, as does its wheelbase, but very little else. All other significant dimensions are bespoke, as are key operational systems such as suspension and steering. Clearly, both inside and out, the Emira owes nothing in terms of its appearance to any previous Lotus.

Instead, this is Lotus trying to present a more mainstream product, one with appeal that stretches beyond the central core of diehards who’d never need convincing. Reaching out into provinces where lies what one would imagine is a somewhat larger constituency of admirers who have always loved the idea of owning a Lotus, but have feared the realities might not live up to their dreams.

I’m not going to dwell too much further on whether Lotus has found that essential quality required to compete headlong against the Cayman, because in order to get this story to you as soon as possible, I elected to drive a car that’s best described as a pre-pre-production prototype with many interior fittings not yet up to production specification fit and finish. But making due allowance, it seems a sizeable and necessary step forward has been made, if not perhaps quite the giant leap that would have been required to out-Porsche the Porsche.

Inevitably comparisons will be made between Toyota’s rather blue-collar, Camry-derived 3.5-litre V6 and the Porsche’s more blue-blooded 4.0-litre flat-six found in the Cayman GTS. Yes, the Porsche engine is smoother, sounds better and revs higher, but the supercharged Toyota loses nothing to its aristocratic rival in throttle response, is blessed with a torque curve both flatter and fatter, and comes with its own rather gravelly but by no means unappealing voice. And, importantly, at part throttle while cruising it’s quiet enough not to be intrusive.

The performance supplied is convincing without being in any way outstanding. Look at the power and weight and that tells you roughly what’s on offer here even before you’ve looked at the acceleration claims. It offers strong, solid performance from notably low revs, without ever getting close to providing that hurtling, runaway train sensation found in true supercars and an increasingly large number of otherwise comparatively humdrum EVs.

To go with that is a gearbox full of ratios well-spaced to take advantage of the Emira’s torque. But the shift quality itself is unremarkable: there’s nothing remotely unpleasant about the slightly loose shift, but the pleasure provided by a manual Porsche Cayman just by swapping cogs is notable only by its absence.

But as you’d expect with any Lotus, the Emira is all about its chassis and, bar a couple of reservations, it comes close to brilliant. Certainly, that softly sprung, languid gait that has been a hallmark of street-tuned Lotuses for years is ever present in this Touring specification car. The ride quality is good by any standards, and terrific for a mid-engined two-seat sportscar. The steering remains in the tiny minority to keep faith with hydraulic assistance – thank heavens for that – and is perfectly weighted and geared. You can really feel the road and, at up to the seven to eight tenths effort level you’ll use in a public space, this is a fine handling and riding car, fully worthy of its founder’s initials on its badge.

Even so, the softer suspension is not so well suited to track work, at least when combined with that aforementioned limited slip differential. It rides kerbs weirdly well and grip levels are fine, even on the all-rounder Goodyear tyre. But push too hard and the car will soon start to exhibit quite pronounced understeer, which is not very Lotus like at all. You can work around it, by being more conservative with entry speed or trailing the brake in the apex. Thereafter it can even be made to drift quite nicely, which is another trait you don’t expect from a Lotus. My strong instinct is the car would be better off either without the differential or with the sport suspension springing.

The cabin is very simple, perhaps more sparce than people might imagine or want for this kind of car, but this is a Lotus and the minimalist approach works. There are two information displays, both high-def screens, one containing the instruments in front of you, the other a centralised touchscreen infotainment system. There are ugly buttons on the squared off steering wheel I’d rather do without – if McLaren can have unadorned wheels, why not Lotus? – but save a small and welcome row of ventilation control buttons, that’s it.

Space-wise it’s actually very accommodating with both leg and headroom to spare for even the tallest of conventionally proportioned occupants. I’d have preferred a tiny bit more reach adjustment on the steering wheel, but otherwise and in terms of the ergonomic arrangement of the driving position and the relationship it forms between you, the steering wheel, the gear lever and the pedals, it’s pretty perfect. As is the positioning of those pedals. This, thank goodness, is a car that requires heel-and-toe downshifts if it’s to be driven smoothly on track and you’ll find no footwell better set up for it than this.

There was a time when a sportscar constructed around bonded aluminium extrusions would have been considered to exist at the absolute cutting edge of technological capability. That, however, was back in the mid-1990s when Lotus was introducing the then revolutionary Elise. But not only has Lotus been using that approach to the exclusion of all others ever since, it also took on the engineering of the original Vanquish for Aston Martin, with the result that all production Astons (save the DBX) have since been built the same way too.

The advantages it brings include strength and immense platform flexibility allowing, for instance, easy changes of wheelbase. The disadvantages are that the method is less space-efficient than a conventional monocoque and – here’s the surprising bit – not that light. Perhaps the single most disappointing fact about the Emira is that whether you compare a four-cylinder car to the Cayman S, to which its price is most closely aligned, or a V6 to a Cayman GTS, the Lotus is uniformly heavier than the Porsche. Not by much it’s true, but any amount seems to fly in the face of Chapman’s ‘simplify, then add lightness’ motto.

The Emira is a fine achievement. You’ll doubtless read elsewhere that ‘it’s the car the Evora should have been from the start’, but actually it’s better than that. It is now that thing the Evora could never have been: an entirely credible alternative to a Porsche Cayman. No, it’s not perfect but nobody expects perfection from a Lotus. What they want is a car with superb chassis characteristics that are focussed on the quality of the driving experience, but to have such assets in a form that makes the car as good in reality as it seems in theory.

And on these points the Emira does not disappoint. Which is not to say it cannot be improved. We’ll wait for a full road test before passing final judgement on fit and finish, but we can say now it should be lighter than it is and that you should take care choosing the right suspension and differential combination. Even so, as the last Lotus to be powered by an internal combustion engine, the Emira is both a fitting farewell to the past as well as a fluently executed, impressive and enjoyable bridge to its future.