The nine best Lotus road cars

Lotus Emira (2021)

Too soon to credit the Emira as one of Lotus’ best ever road cars? When it made its debut at the 2021 Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard, Lotus was inundated with deposits from those keen to buy a bit of Lotus history. This would, after all, be the final mainstream Lotus offered with an internal combustion engine (we’ve since had the limited run Type 66 and other rarefied special editions are not ruled out).

Initially available with the 3.5-litre Toyota V6 that we’ve seen in the Exige and Evora (with manual and automatic options), that Emira range has since expanded to include the option of an AMG 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo complete with an eight-speed twin-clutch automatic gearbox. 

The performance stats between the two variants are so close that choosing between them comes down to driver preference in terms of power delivery, noise and gear shifting. The Toyota-powered Emira’s figures are 405PS (297kW) and 420Nm (310lb ft) for a 0-60mph time of 4.2 seconds and a top speed of 180mph. The four-cylinder concedes 9mph on the top speed and just 0.1 second in the 0-60mph sprint with its greater 429Nm (316lb ft) of torque and lesser 364PS (267kW). Even the list price is broadly similar, except in markets where the larger capacity V6 is penalised by higher taxes.

Lenghty delivery delays for the first Emira customers hasn't taken the shine off what will be the last traditional Lotus. That’s how history will view the Emira, and it’s therefore worthy of its place in the greatest ever Lotus road cars.

Lotus Exige (2012)

The first Exige arrived in 2000 and was derived from the Motorsport Elise, a coupé version of the Elise built for a single-make racing series. And it looked like a racer for the road with its aggressive front splitter and rear wing, bulked up wheelarches and roof scoop. It was a hardcore reworking of its roadster sibling that lived up to the looks. For the Series 2, the Exige was closer its Elise equivalent, but that all changed in 2012 when the Series 3 arrived. No longer did it share the four-cylinder configuration. In came the 355PS (261kW) 3.5-litre Toyota V6 engine that had seen service in the Evora since 2009.

To accommodate the larger engine, the Exige grew in length by 25cm and width by 5mm. Add in the greater power output and at a stroke this Type 111 derivative left behind its sportscar roots to become a junior supercar. While it shares the cabin with the Elise, the Exige V6 feels a more serious proposition as soon as you sit in it, those enlarged haunches apparent in the rear-view mirror make it feel altogether more grown up. The V6 bark and weightier controls add to that sense the moment you set off.

Over the car’s 11-year production span, various iterations and limited editions were created, the black and gold LF1 being particularly sought after. The Cup 430, released in 2017, is the most extreme incarnation, the name reflecting the supercharged V6 engine’s output in PS (316kW). Short of the £2m Evija hypercar, the Exige Cup 430 is the most thrilling Lotus road car of all time.

Lotus Elise (1996)

The Elise was a return to form for Lotus after some troublesome years following Colin Chapman’s death, an economic recession and a forgettable period in F1. Every facet of the Elise project screamed Lotus – achieving performance by “adding lightness” through innovation – it proved Chapman’s minimalist philosophy could be interpreted in 1990s. A healthy cash injection from a certain Bugatti-owning, Italian businessman also helped turned the tide.

Out went Chapman’s steel backbone type chassis of old – used in every Lotus road car since the ’60s Elan – and in came a totally new vehicle construction method: an extruded and bonded aluminium structure. Not just innovative for Lotus, but revolutionary for the industry. The chassis itself weighed just 68kg. Add to that the svelte clamshell bodywork, a lightweight, mid-mounted, 1.8-litre Rover K-Series engine and Robert’s your father’s brother: the result was a wee Lotus sportscar weighing around 700-odd kilos. For comparison, a standard Mk1 MX-5 weighed around 960kg and a contemporary Audi TT more than 1,200kg!

While not the fastest Elise, the S1 is perhaps the purest incarnation. Power of 120PS (88kW) may not sound much, but Lotus’ typical obsessive focus on minimising weight enabled the Elise to punch above its weight: acceleration from 0-60mph in 5.8 seconds and a top speed of 126mph. By small ’90s sportscar standards, that was more than acceptable. 

The Elise-derived spin-offs – the hard-topped Exige, limited edition 340R, stripped-out 2-Eleven and Europa – all brought an extra spice to the Lotus brand and are almost worthy of their own segments. But it all began with the ’90s magnum opus: the S1 Elise. We’re unlikely to see another car like it.

Lotus Elite (1974)

There have been a few instances of Lotus re-using model names. There are two distinct strains of Elan while the Europa also means one of two things. Elite was another name that Lotus dusted off for re-use for the 1974 Wedge.

Colin Chapman wanted to move the Lotus marque upmarket and away from its cottage industry beginnings, and the grand touring Elite was the car he conceived to make that move. At launch, it was the most expensive four-cylinder car on the market. It was also the first Lotus road car to use the company’s own 907 engine, although it had already been used by Jensen-Healey (who customers unwittingly carried out final development).

The sharp, wedgy styling was penned by Oliver Winterbottom, whose career also took him to TVR and Jaguar. Beneath the cutting edge composite bodywork was a steel backbone structure similar to that of the Elan and Europa that came before it. The chassis and suspension was sketched out by Chapman, making the Elite the last road car he had significant input with. While the car was larger and more cosseting than previous Lotus models, at 1,043kg it still retained the lightweight ethos.

A year later, the Elite was joined by the Eclat. It was similar in all but its fastback styling, and evolved into the Excel that lived on until the 1990s. But we picked the Elite for this list simply because we dig its shooting break styling that seems to look better every year.

Lotus Esprit Turbo (1980)

Made famous by a certain Martini-sipping spy with a license to kill, in the films The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only, the Lotus Esprit certainly had the looks to complement its Hollywood mystique.  

The original, oh-so-’70s wedge silhouette was penned by Giorgetto Giugiaro, and made its debut alongside his Maserati Boomerang concept at the Turin Motor Show in 1972. Dubbed ‘The Silver Car’, the then-unnamed Esprit stole the show and took aim at the junior supercars of the day from Porsche and Ferrari.

The handling was excellent, but the Esprit’s four-pot struggled to dash to 62mph in 8 seconds: it didn’t cut it. But then, the Turbo arrived. The Essex Turbo Esprit – an unfortunate tribute to Team Lotus’s dubious F1 sponsor of the time – upped the ante, bringing 213PS (156kW) to the party. This forced induction upgrade returned true supercar-killing figures: 0-60mph in 6.1 seconds and a top speed of more than 150mph. Chassis, suspension, brake reworks and a new Giugiaro aerodynamic body kit complemented the new dry-sump 910 engine. It was good enough to wipe smiles in Modena and Stuttgart.

For the first time in its history, Lotus had a road car that was right up there with the grandees. In the 1980s, turbochargers added F1 kudos; just for a while, multi-cylinder engines didn’t point to superiority. The Lotus came from a genuinely successful stable, it looked a million dollars, was lighter and faster than the competition and communicated with the driver in a way no mid-engined, road-going Ferrari ever had.

Lotus Cortina (1963)

The Lotus Cortina was arguably the pioneering homologation special. The brainchild of Ford’s Walter Hayes, 1,000 needed to be built to qualify the car for Group 2 saloon car racing, and in the end 2,894 of them left Lotus’ Cheshunt factory. It was Lotus that carried out final assembly of the cars, slotting in the new Twin-Cam engine that had been designed by Autocar magazine’s technical editor Harry Munday.

Increased power wasn’t the only way in which performance was enhanced. Typical of Lotus, weight loss was part of the story with alloy skinned doors, bonnet and bootlid. Finally, the rear suspension was heavily reworked to make the workaday Cortina more suited to the track.

During the car’s maiden outing in the BSCC encounter at Oulton Park on 20^th September 1964, Jack Sears recorded a class win aboard his works Lotus Cortina. A few teething problems aside, 1964 would prove a walkover for the factory-run cars with Jim Clark ending the year as winner of the BRSCC British Saloon Car Championship. ‘Race on Sunday, sell on Monday’ was born.

The Lotus Cortina was followed up by the Dagenham-built Cortina Lotus Mk2 (note the reversed priority of the names) but it’s the first generation car that takes its place as the original fast Ford.

Lotus Elan (1962)

The Elan continued Chapman’s “simplify, then add lightness” philosophy – though perhaps not in the way he had intended. Burned by the difficulties of productionising a stressed glassfibre monocoque with the Elite – and its failure to succeed commercially – Chapman’s planned successor required a step back from the state-of-the-art.

The Elan was constructed around a steel backbone chassis upon which a vastly simplified glassfibre body was fixed. Not only did this increase ease of production, it informed Lotus’ production process for the next three decades. 

This adjustment also helped the Elan undercut the Elite by £350 and consequently, the new car outsold it in the first year. Not only was the Elan a commercial success – one that propped up Chapman’s racing efforts – it handled like a dream. The low mass, near-perfect weight distribution, exceptional stiffness and all-round independent suspension made the Elan as close to a Formula car for the road as one could buy in 1962.

Accurate and agile, the Elan delivered incomparable “feel” that allowed you to be on the limit without tip-toeing over the point of no return. The Elan is a personal favourite of the legendary F1 designer Gordon Murray, who owns two. It had such influence on the man himself that he set the diminutive Lotus as the benchmark for the McLaren F1’s steering, though Murray claims this target was never quite achieved. Praise indeed.

Lotus Elite (1957)

Never has a manufacturer’s philosophy been applied with such rigour as at Lotus. “Adding power makes you faster on the straights; subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere,” therefore, is the perfect quote to open a treatise on Lotus’ first pure, road-going coupé: the Elite. 

The Lotus Elite epitomised Chapman’s maverick, entrepreneurial spirit. Its highly innovative glassfibre monocoque construction – which formed the entire load-bearing structure – kept weight down to just 500kg. The body shape itself – though beautifully proportioned – was also aerodynamically advanced for its time. Thanks to the pen of Peter Kirwan-Taylor and the brain of aerodynamicist Frank Costin, the Elite achieved an extremely low drag co-efficient of just 0.29. To add context, an early Jaguar E-type was a bricklike 0.44 and a Porsche 911 was 0.34.

Light weight and low drag allowed the Elite to reach 115mph, reaping true sportscar performance from a relatively meagre 1.2-litre, four-pot, Coventry-Climax engine. However, v-max was not what it was all about. On a typical B-road, its irreproachable handling would enable any half-skilled driver to average 60mph while never exceeding 70mph. So light and nimble, it would simply outpace most other sportscars of the day.

Unsurprisingly, being a Lotus, similarly amazing stats were gained on the track. Lotus took the car to Le Mans every year from 1959 to 1964 and every year it won its class. Twice it also won the treasured Index of Thermal Efficiency, that is, when the race authorities couldn’t find a way of ensuring their own Deutsch Bonnets and Panhards triumphed.

Lotus Seven (1957)

The Seven is the archetypal Lotus. In its earliest forms it had little power – 40PS (29kW) – delivered by hopped-up proprietary engines (side-valve engines), but it met the design brief back in 1957 with pinpoint accuracy, just as the somewhat evolved Caterham successor does today.

There’s a certain period charm to an early, alloy-clothed Super Seven. A car that swung before the ’60s. Images of Graham Hill winning at Brands Hatch in a Coventry Climax-powered Seven reveal a car that was visually and technically closer to a contemporary grand prix car than anything else. That you could buy one, assemble it at home, drive to the track and be dicing for the lead all for less than £600 made it real and relevant in a way that no other car was.

The knowledgeable might contend that the best resolved Sevens were delivered by a chap called Graham Nearn – and Jez Coates – and not the great Antony Colin Bruce Chapman. Perhaps that’s true, but the team at Caterham had the benefit of proprietary engines of far greater sophistication, and while the chassis and suspension has been continually improved, the basic recipe and the Seven’s DNA has barely changed.

Lotus Elan image courtesy of Motorsport Images; Lotus Elite Type 75 image courtsey of Absolute Lotus magazine.