Lotus Emira hits the track – sideways

The Lotus Emira has been captured sliding its way around the car-maker’s storied Hethel test track.

Ahead of the Emira’s Australian touch-down in July next year, when it will become Lotus’ final combustion-engine model priced from $185K, Lotus director Gavan Kershaw put the supercharged V6 coupe through its paces in an official YouTube video late last week.

“With the 3.5-litre V6 configuration and the supercharger, you start an acceleration from as low as 1500rpm and the car just pulls and pulls and pulls, getting stronger and stronger as the revs increase. This is what a real sports car feels like,” says the man who leads dynamic development of every new Lotus.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the Emira on track; in August, former Formula 1 star Jenson Button took one out to Laguna Seca.

However, this latest clip reveals much more about the Emira’s raspy V6 engine note, as well as its
“intuitive” driving performance.

At one point, Kershaw activates ‘Fully Off’ – one of four different driving modes – in which the stability control is completely disengaged.

“The whole package is tuned to give you maximum reward and confidence. It’s ‘for the drivers’,” he concludes.

Priced at $184,900 plus on-road costs, the Lotus Emira V6 First Edition sits $10,000 upstream of the Porsche Cayman GTS and at the upper end of the Lotus spectrum compared with the Elise, Exige and Evora models that the Emira replaces.

Power is sourced from Toyota-derived 3.5-litre petrol V6 boosted by an Edelbrock 1740 supercharger to make 298kW and 420Nm in six-speed manual form, or 430Nm with an optional six-speed automatic ($4000).

According to Lotus, the manual Emira V6 hits 100km/h in 4.2sec in automatic guise (4.3sec for the manual) and can reach a top speed of 290km/h.

From “later in 2023”, the V6 will be joined a four-cylinder First Edition variant that will draw power from a 268kW version of the 300kW-plus 2.0-litre turbo-petrol engine in the Mercedes-AMG A 45 S hot hatch.