Lotus Emira

[Rich B]

Great colour / ride height. Just needs silver ( painted not diamond cut ) wheels

this.

[mik]

Great colour / ride height. Just needs silver ( painted not diamond cut ) wheels

this.

those.

I know his style isn't loved by many, but as he is an ex-Evora owner (Evora 400 - ie a "series2" vs my "last of the series1") I did want to hear his thoughts and comparisons, which he delivers pretty clearly.

I've spared you the start of the video which is a couple of minutes of images and music.... which didn't work well for me.

He makes some interesting points, and I remain very interested in the Emira, but not in any great hurry to upgrade to one. Keen to see where Lotus take the V6 Emira (they surely have to do one with at least the 430 engine like@Maurice has in his Exige (and was fitted to the GT430 Evora) as a last multi-cylinder ICE hurrah)?

[mik]

Also - seeing some unrest on the forums - several people (or people they know) cancelling their Emira orders due to delays in build-date, difficulties getting a test-drive, and a recent £2k price increase.

Dealers do have (as I understand it) one car each, and at the moment test drives are only being offered to those who have placed deposits, but there do still seem to be some difficulties, and as the biggest decision for each owner is choosing Sport or Touring chassis... there is no way to do a "back to back" to aid that decision if your dealer only has a sole demonstrator....

Delays seem fairly well aligned with the rest of the automotive industry - complaints seem to be more around the way in which these are being communicated. Similarly the price hike (which doesn't seem to affect the very earliest orders) - most folks seem to agree isn't unreasonable, but some believe they were given assurances that this would not happen when they placed their deposits.

[scotta]

So the £60k i4 was just a myth basically?

[Mito Man]

If people ordering were given assurances that the price wouldn't increase then that's very shady by the dealer. I'd want that in writing because in every new sale contract that I've ever seen there's a provision for allowing price increases - 6.4.1
https://www.lotuscars.com/en-GB/emira-terms-conditions

On an off topic note 4.4.8 is lolworthy. Didn't do too well there did they

[Jobbo]

So the £60k i4 was just a myth basically?

Not surprising really.

[mik]

So the £60k i4 was just a myth basically?

First-edition cars are loaded as is normal for first-edition cars, but yeah - can't imagine there ever being a stripped-of-all-options £60k i4 now.

[Jobbo]

If people ordering were given assurances that the price wouldn't increase then that's very shady by the dealer. I'd want that in writing because in every new sale contract that I've ever seen there's a provision for allowing price increases - 6.4.1
https://www.lotuscars.com/en-GB/emira-terms-conditions

On an off topic note 4.4.8 is lolworthy. Didn't do too well there did they

4.4.8 doesn't say they have to terminate your order; it just gives them discretion. I'm not sure they have any great reason to terminate orders from people who want to sell straight on; that gives them a good idea what the market actually values the cars at thus justifying an immediate price rise.

[Ascender]

Porsche and BMW are raising prices this year too, I guess most manufacturers are. There was a cut-off for the Touring of 31/12 to have your order moved from being a speculative deposit to "accepted by factory" or BMW couldn't honour last year's base price. Some of their options have also gone up in price which caused an increase in mine when I changed alloys - the manager was able to override it.

I guess its one of those things which dealers may have not have communicated or handled very well as the experience seems to vary wildly from dealer to dealer.

Not being able to drive the Sport and Touring before having to order seems a real pain though. How far out from build date do you have to finalise your choice?

[mik]

Not being able to drive the Sport and Touring before having to order seems a real pain though. How far out from build date do you have to finalise your choice?

Not sure tbh.

And I have just realised that there is a way to compare the two back-to-back. So long as you are prepared to travel to Hethel. And part with £450.

https://www.lotuscars.com/es-ES/driving ... amic-emira

[duncs500]

Not being able to drive the Sport and Touring before having to order seems a real pain though. How far out from build date do you have to finalise your choice?

Not sure tbh.

And I have just realised that there is a way to compare the two back-to-back. So long as you are prepared to travel to Hethel. And part with £450.

https://www.lotuscars.com/es-ES/driving ... amic-emira

If I were going to buy one anyway, I'd do that, probably a cool day out even if it is £450.

[Mito Man]

I'm a little bit surprised that they don't then deduct the price of the day from the car purchase on the day you pay for it. These kinds of days are pretty standard with new sports cars.

[duncs500]

Lotus need every penny they can get!

[Mito Man]

Geely are on speed dial.

[Ascender]

Not being able to drive the Sport and Touring before having to order seems a real pain though. How far out from build date do you have to finalise your choice?

Not sure tbh.

And I have just realised that there is a way to compare the two back-to-back. So long as you are prepared to travel to Hethel. And part with £450.

https://www.lotuscars.com/es-ES/driving ... amic-emira

If I were going to buy one anyway, I'd do that, probably a cool day out even if it is £450.

That's pretty cool actually and not a bad price, I'd probably do that if I was local.

[Matty]

Interesting to see more and more Emira's appearing up for sale, 25 on AT and the price starting to drop too, with prices now what they'd cost new (£82k -since the price hike).

I think the waiting list is still quote long....but I think the i4 will end up being the popular one so interesting to see what happens to the V6 pricing.

Also, Doug didn't seem overly impressed.

[mik]

Interesting.

First time Mr Litchfield or Milltek have fiddled with Lotus AFAIK.



Not sure why the exhaust tips look the same before & after? (Edit - I think it’s just a still image of the car with soundz added).Also don’t know why you’d just do a static rev, when you only really hear the full sound under load. (Accepting that you can clearly hear a diff between before & after)

[mik]

Someone on the Loltus forum (who must have better access to SMMT data than normal, as Lotus have slipped off the charts that I can see now) reckons they have sold 313 cars YTD (upto the end of March) in the UK. Not sure any Eletre's are on the road yet, so I think that number is solely Emira.

Whilst that is only around 5% of what Porsche achieved in the same period, it puts the Q1_23 sales numbers at something in the order of 140% of the annual sales over the last few years.

[DeskJockey]

Spotted a yellow one on the M25 earlier today. Sadly going in the opposite direction, so beyond recognising it, I didn't see much.

[mik]

Spotted my first one out in the wild today. And OF COURSE I was in Mrs mik’s car as I had just popped out for some fresh rolls and Kelly cars have no problem doing a 2 mile journey and then being out away again. )

Bright yellow. Looked very good (although my immediate thought was “Evora!” due to the dimensions and front profile - it took half a sec for me to realise it was an Emira.)