“Lightweight sports cars are dead, long live lightweight sports cars.” We can imagine someone at raising their glass to this as the most memorable models from Hethel, Norfolk, reaches the end of the windy, twist road with Lotus ceasing production of the Elise, Exige and Evora in anticipation of an exciting new future for the marque.
Over the course of 26 years, Lotus built a total of 51,738 units of the trio; representing close to half of all Lotus cars ever built in the carmaker’s 73-year history. If you’re surprised at the figures; or the lack of them, that’s always been an Achilles heel for the company but lays the foundation for an electrifying future that’s just around the next hairpin.
Furthermore, Lotus also built an additional 9,715 sports cars for third-party clients, including GM as the Vauxhall VX220 or Opel Speedster and Tesla as the Roadster.
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From 1996 to 2000, the first-generation Elise and Exige sports cars were built in a small assembly hall at Hethel alongside the Lotus Esprit. The current lines will be dismantled and replaced with all-new state-of-the-art facilities in support of the all-new Emira factory as well as the electric Evija.
The new lines herald a high-tech and semi-automated era that will see capacity increase to 5,000 units a year on a single shift.
The very last Elise, Exige and Evora will join Lotus’ growing heritage collection. The trio comprises the last Elise, a Sport 240 Final Edition finished in Yellow and the last of 35,124 cars; the last Exige, a Cup 430 Final Edition in Heritage Racing Green – number 10,497; and the last Evora – a GT430 Sport finished in Dark Metallic Grey – the last of a production run of 6,117.
“First of all, I would like to thank the Lotus team who have worked on the Elise, Exige and Evora over the years and who are now transferring to Emira and Evija manufacturing. I would also like to convey enormous gratitude to all the customers of the Elise, Exige and Evora over the last 26 years for their passion, enthusiasm and support. These customers have given our ‘three Es’ true cult status – usually reserved for long-out-of-production classics,” enthused Matt Windle, Managing Director, Lotus Cars.
“The Elise, particularly, has been a huge part of my life. It was conceived when I had just finished my apprenticeship and I was working in the vehicle workshops helping to build early prototypes. The Exige will always remain close to me, as the development programme was the first that I worked on as an engineer and I also won the British GT3 championship in a race version. The Evora is also hugely important as it showed that you can have high performance and award-winning handling without sacrificing the longer-journey GT ability. I have first-hand experience of this as I won the British GT4 championships in one and I will never forget leading the technical programme for our Evora Le Mans campaign where we achieved a podium,” reminisced Gavan Kershaw, Director of Vehicle Attributes.
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Next out of the Lotus stable is the Emira, the critically acclaimed new mid-engineered sports car from Lotus. Launched last July at Hethel and on a world tour ever since, it’s the last petrol-powered car from Lotus. Joining the first electric Lotus – the Evija hypercar and the most powerful production car in the world – will be the all-electric Type 132, Lotus’ first SUV, which will be revealed to the world in the spring.
Keyword: Pour one out for the Lotus Elise, Exige and Evora as they go six-feet under and lay the foundation for an electrifying future