Lotus Emira V6
Lotus’s traditional V6 sports car finally meets the Autocar timing gear The Lotus Emira has had a moderately tumultuous start to life. You could argue this makes it an authentic Lotus from the off, even if that probably wasn’t the intention.Back in 2017, Geely acquired a 51% stake in Lotus (with 49% remaining with Malaysian firm Etika), with grand plans to turn it into a true Porsche rival. After the turnaround that Volvo experienced under Geely ownership, hopes were high. Indeed, as well as a new factory in Wuhan, China, to build the electric Lotus Eletre SUV and Lotus Emeya saloon, another was built in Hethel to assemble the sports cars.The results took a while to materialise, however. We have yet to get near a production-spec example of the Lotus Evija electric hypercar, and the Emira was beset with delays. In fairness, a pandemic didn’t help.By the end of 2022, Emiras finally started trickling out of Hethel, to customers and to the press. We got a taste of a pre-production V6, which only just lost a comparison test to the mighty Porsche 718 Cayman GTS 4.0. Since then, we got a short drive in a four-cylinder Lotus Emira Turbo SE (nice enough, but not the one you want), as well as Eletres, but a V6 car we could road test was hard to come by for a while.But more than two years into Emira production, it seems an oversight not to have road tested the current Lotus sports car, so let’s do that now, and see how the Emira performs on road and track, and what it’s like to live with.
Lotus’s traditional V6 sports car finally meets the Autocar timing gear
The Lotus Emira has had a moderately tumultuous start to life. You could argue this makes it an authentic Lotus from the off, even if that probably wasn’t the intention.Back in 2017, Geely acquired a 51% stake in Lotus (with 49% remaining with Malaysian firm Etika), with grand plans to turn it into a true Porsche rival. After the turnaround that Volvo experienced under Geely ownership, hopes were high. Indeed, as well as a new factory in Wuhan, China, to build the electric Lotus Eletre SUV and Lotus Emeya saloon, another was built in Hethel to assemble the sports cars.The results took a while to materialise, however. We have yet to get near a production-spec example of the Lotus Evija electric hypercar, and the Emira was beset with delays. In fairness, a pandemic didn’t help.By the end of 2022, Emiras finally started trickling out of Hethel, to customers and to the press. We got a taste of a pre-production V6, which only just lost a comparison test to the mighty Porsche 718 Cayman GTS 4.0. Since then, we got a short drive in a four-cylinder Lotus Emira Turbo SE (nice enough, but not the one you want), as well as Eletres, but a V6 car we could road test was hard to come by for a while.But more than two years into Emira production, it seems an oversight not to have road tested the current Lotus sports car, so let’s do that now, and see how the Emira performs on road and track, and what it’s like to live with. 
