Sounds like Lotus is keen on recreating more big-money heritage cars

A while back Lotus announced it would only produce electric cars from 2028 onwards. Then, towards the end of 2023, it unveiled an all-new track-only monster with an 830bhp push-rod V8. Yeehaw!

That V8 is housed in the Type 66 – essentially a lost Can-Am car that was designed in the 1970s but never made production. Well, until someone found the drawings in the Chapman family archives a few years ago and decided to make 10 examples at over £1m a piece.

And - surprise! - it now sounds like Lotus has got the bug for these old-school recreations.

“Our heritage is really important,” chief commercial officer Mike Johnstone tells TG. “It’s the thing that we always reference back to and something we should never forget. And we should also infuse the future with the past in the right way. 

“When it comes to projects like the Type 66, really that was kind of serendipity more than anything else. But it’s that spirit of pioneering and rebelliousness that has been with Lotus for a number of years, so if things like that come up again, we definitely will do them. And I know the Type 66 has inspired some thoughts in the different teams to look at old designs and things we’ve done in the past.  

“We’ll always explore. There’s nothing in the pipeline at the moment, but we've had really strong interest in Type 66. So, to use a cliché, watch this space I guess.”

Well, that’s certainly good news. Even if these things are ludicrously expensive and even more difficult to get hold of, we’re not going to begrudge Lotus for building them. And it sounds like they’re rather enjoyable projects to work on too.

“These things are just hugely fun to be involved in. It stretches the bandwidth of what you do in your day-to-day work and provides more outlets for creativity,” says design VP Ben Payne.

“They represent an expression of what’s going on in the wider marketplace right now too. There is a desire to take elements of the past and bring them back, just as much as there is to take new technologies and project them into the future. I think projects like the Type 66 are really interesting, and if the customer demand is there then I think most brands out there are going to leverage the pure commercial opportunity.”

What would you like to see next from the Lotus back catalogue?