Lotus Emira review

Okay, here's the bad news. You start the new Lotus Emira by lifting a grotesque red cover that looms over the engine start button like some sort of overgrown fingernail. It’s not promising. But hey, sense of occasion right?

The V6 catches and settles into a slightly buzzy idle. Select first, and as you release the clutch the electric parking brake – in a Lotus – automatically unclamps. And you set off, marvelling at how civilised it all is. 

What’s the powertrain like?

The 3.5-litre engine isn’t a screamer. It doesn’t make as raucous a noise as the V6s of the final Evoras did, due to new legislation kiboshing the naughty exhausts. But inside you get a decent V6 thrum and the joy of watching the throttle linkage opening and closing in the rear view mirror. It’s not as exotic a noise as that of a Porsche Cayman GTS 4.0, but more pleasing than one of the gruff 4cyl Caymans, and never resonant or annoying. 

You don’t get heaps of torque – 310lb ft is merely middling hot hatch territory these days – but though this is heavy for a Lotus sports car, it moves the Emira’s 1,440kg without leaving you grasping for a lower gear. Peak power is 400bhp at 6,800rpm, right at the redline. As the V6 doesn’t really have much of a crescendo to its delivery it’s all too easy to smash into the redline, especially as the rev-counter graphics on the early cars we’ve driven have been too dark to read easily. The car actually sounds better from outside, where you get more of a rasp from the V6.

Still, the Emira’s cross-country pace is easily rapid enough to justify the money being asked: Lotus claims 0-62mph in 4.3 seconds which is perfectly respectable for a manual rear-drive car, and in-gear it’s exciting without being scary. You’ve got massive traction (thanks to surprisingly wide 295-section rear tyres) and unlike that Porsche we’re going to have to keep mentioning as it’s the benchmark, the gearing’s well-suited to A- and B-roads.

So, you’ll be changing gear more often than in a Cayman. The shift itself is a bit stiff – the throw is quite short and truculent, so you’ll need to be deliberate with it and learn to finesse the shifts, while a Cayman – or even the manual Toyota GR Supra – is more natural. Drivers with feet on the small side might find heeling and toeing on the downshifts is trickier than expected.

Tell me about the handling.

So, the powertrain is fine, but not a headline. As ever with Lotus, what you’re really here for is the steering and chassis balance.

Unusually, Lotus has come close to spoiling its efforts with hydraulically-assisted steering by fitting an oblong steering wheel that’s too thick and mounted too eccentrically, so it becomes a barrier between you and the information it should be feeding back into your palms. Blame the marketing department for insisting the Emira nodded to the Evija hypercar inside: we bet the dynamics team would’ve much sooner fitted a less tarty round steering wheel. 

Still, there’s better feedback than anything in the class, though some of the grainy, noisier feedback has been filtered out, which suits the Emira’s more grown-up brief.

Lotus always sets up cars very consciously for road or track, and the Emira is very much a road car. So, though the steering is quick and pointy you sense it’ll understeer before the back lets go, and there’s dive as you turn in from the long-travel suspension. This is a car designed to breathe with a road rather than attack it with sky-high spring rates or massive downforce, and that’s because Lotus sets up its cars on UK roads which are invariably falling to bits. 

If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere where infrastructure isn’t crumbling before your very eyes, then you might be tempted by the Sport chassis, instead of the Touring chassis we’ve been testing. This brings stiffer suspension and stickier Michelin tyres instead of the Goodyears on our test car, and will be popular with track day goers. 

We’ll report back when we’ve driven a Sport, but the Touring chassis doesn’t want for grip or composure on UK roads. It isn’t as flighty as the far lighter Alpine A110, and there’s less sense of the car moving about beneath you, but neither is it so locked down and humourless that the car seems po-faced. It’s just a different compromise to what we’re used to in a Lotus.

Anything else?

You can flick a switch between Tour, Sport and Track driving modes, with the usual effect of shortening the throttle response while angering the graphics. Sport is the one for road use: Track leaves you without the driver assists.

Unlike an Elise, which practically crackled with unfiltered analogue feedback, the Emira takes more time and miles to get to know. But once you’ve spent time with it, it’s a really pleasing, engaging and feedback-rich road car: balanced, fast, and involving. With a sweeter gearshift, a less annoying steering wheel and perhaps a fruitier sounding engine, it would be unbeatable.

What about the AMG-powered Emira i4? 

If you’re buying an Emira for Sunday drives in the countryside, you want the V6. But if you’re hoping to daily-drive it, in traffic, in the city, on the motorway as well as indulging your inner racing driver, we’d take the i4. 

Firstly, it’s more efficient, returning over 40mpg when cruising at 70mph in eighth gear. It’s also a pretty good auto, just letting itself down when you need to do a three-point turn or park by being too slow to switch from Drive to Reverse or back.

It’s certainly quick enough to still be exciting, with 360bhp on tap and more torque than the V6. And though the noise isn’t as musical as the V6, the turbo is a real presence in the cabin, chuntering and chirruping amusingly. There’s turbo lag aplenty, but that’s not Lotus’s fault – the A45 also suffers. And if anything, not having a table-like plateau of on-demand surge makes the driving experience more entertaining and interactive. 

Sadly the engine, which has a new intake and exhaust in its British mid-engined home, isn’t as rabid and mad as the A45’s installation, and we hope the rumoured hotter versions will inject a bit more of this playful character into the Emira soon.