10 reasons we love Lotus

Aah, Lotus. One of the most storied car companies in the world. Maker of some of the most riveting road cars ever produced. Fabled icon of motor sport. Engineering savants behind some of the world’s greatest non-Lotus cars. And the Sinclair C5. One or two controversies along the way, too.
There are loads of reasons to love Lotus…. brilliant, complicated, fascinating Lotus. Let’s look at ten of them.

1 | Its history

Lotus effectively started in the late ‘40s when a young lad called Colin Chapman re-engineered an Austin Seven in his garage so he could race with it. A couple of cars later, Chapman set up Lotus Engineering, initially to build race cars for customers before moving on to road cars. The basic philosophy – simple, lightweight – remained for decades, and resulted in some of the most pure and riveting driving machines ever committed to metal.

Team Lotus was established in ’54 as distinct from Lotus Engineering, and in the successive decades became a force in multiple motorsport disciplines. Its first Formula One win came in 1960, when Stirling Moss took pole position in Monaco in a Lotus 18. Lotus went on to win seven Formula One championships between 1963 and 1978. Beyond that, the company has competed in IndyCar, Formula Two, and the Le Mans 24-Hour race. And plenty more besides.

Thanks to Doc Brown and Marty McFly, the 1983 DeLorean DMC-12 has become a generational pop culture icon. But beneath the façade of Back To The Future is a car that would almost certainly have seen Lotus founder Colin Chapman go to prison. Long story short, the UK Government had granted millions to John DeLorean to produce his mad gullwing-doored car in Belfast, a huge chunk of which made its way to a Panama-registered company, before disappearing completely. It was allegedly split between John DeLorean, Colin Chapman and Lotus’s Fred Bushell. Chapman died before being convicted, but Bushell served time. And the car sucked. But still, it’s the time machine innit, so all is (almost) forgotten.

Any Lotus Elise, no matter which year it was built and whatever is under the bonnet, can lay claim to being the very best raw driving experience in the world. If you don’t have fun driving an Elise then you probably don’t like driving.

Some cars wear their ‘engineered by Lotus’ badge with pride. The Lotus Carlton. The Vauxhall VX220. The Tesla Roadster. The Proton Satria Neo. The… Sinclair C5. But many more cars have been passed to Lotus during their development to have their handling knocked into shape, without the manufacturer making a song and dance about it. The Hyundai Genesis, the Chevrolet Corvette, the Aston Martin V12 Vanquish and, allegedly, the original Audi R8.

The year that Lotus went absolutely bananas. The Paris Motor Show 2010. A perfectly normal motor show. That was until Lotus’s press conference happened, during which the company revealed six brand new models alongside a melange of non-related celebrities. Bryan May? Check. Mickey Rourke? Of course. Stephen Baldwin? Uh huh. And how many of these new cars – Elise, Elite, Elan, Esprit, Eterne, Ethos – actually made production? That’s right. None. Newly-appointed CEO Dany Bahar left the company soon afterwards, accused of misappropriating company funds.

7 | The Seven

Lotus created the Seven in 1957, the embodiment of the company’s ‘lightness rules’ rules. It only had 36 horsepower and loads of them were sold in kit form (and without assembly instructions) because it was cheaper for customers that way – a much more legal tax-avoidance trick than the Panama thing. The Seven has stood the test of time, too, still sold by Caterham to this day. They tend to have a bit more power these days. Thankfully.

8 | It keeps bouncing back

Like Norwich’s premiere light entertainer, Norfolk-based Lotus keeps taking the knocks and coming back stronger. Nether the DeLorean scandal, nor the Paris thing, nor multiple changes of ownership (Toyota, General Motors, Proton and Geely have been custodians over the years), nor a distinct lack of actual car sales have sent Lotus the way of TVR or British Leyland. And it appears that Lotus will go into a bright new future in the electric age, too…

Okay, so there are those who firmly believe that Lotus has no business producing its latest two models: the Eletre (an electric SUV), and the Emeya (an electric five-door hatchback). They’re heavy, very expensive, and a million miles away from Colin Chapman’s original “simplify… then add lightness” mantra. But they’re also brilliant, and the sort of cars that plenty of people actually want to buy.

Lotus has just unveiled the amazing Theory 1. Sure, it’s just a concept and could ultimately prove meaningless: it’s a 1000-horsepower electric supercar with maddest, most complex doors we’ve ever seen. But it shows that Lotus is serious about taking its sportscar heritage into the future in a meaningful way. The company will offer striking, brilliant-to-drive sportscars alongside four-seat family cars. The sort of thing that Porsche does very successfully. As things stand, it’s looking okay for Lotus.