Lotus Emira

[Zynerji]

Yes, the LT5 engine design and development was outsourced to Lotus and built by Mercury. I did a bit on the engine. Certainly motivated the Corvette guys to pull their finger out with the next engine.

Lotus R&H did a fair bit of work on it and the Active group were stuffing active suspension into it. The intention was to build 200 active units, that got canned pretty quickly.

IIRC, Lotus did the suspension on the 1988 Fiero...

[Greg Locock]

Lotus did have a Fiero, only 1 though. Wiki says the 1988 suspension was Lotus-like, not Lotus and was designed by Pontiac. Maybe Becker or Miles did some tuning on it.

[Tommy Cookers]

It's very good, but isn't it setup to understeer with the standard chassis settings despite being mid-engined?

I am sure the Lotus will be much more neutral out of the box in typical Lotus fashion, without having to tinker with swaybars, spring rates or the like as Corvette enthusiasts may feel they "need" to do. :)

...Journalists always rave more about cars that have spot-on neutral chassis settings out of the box -- be it the Alpine A110 (lift-off oversteer ahoy by L'argus at the Nordschliefe or on Best Motoring: "very sharp handling, great fun"), Lotus Evora, or a humble Ford Fiesta ST, EP3 Civic Type R or Peugeot 205 GTi -- so it does seem strange that a manufacturer like Chevrolet would deliberately set understeer, knowing that this will attract a lot of criticism and reduce the fondness and hype with which the car is received.
But the journalists do have a fair point in that is annoying to have a car that needs to be modified out of the box, just to perform how it should do in the first place. So they rightly praise cars which are 'correct' with their factory settings. :)

having a little self-administered experience of modifying a car for maximum cornering capability ....
I have said a car isn't now certifiable for public road use without characteristics broadly labelled as understeer
(by analogy with the certification requirements of aircraft for the utility and public transport categories)

it seems a good time to ask outright if that is true

perverse control inputs can produce without skill an illusion liked by journalists of a non-understeer characteristic
perverse ie cornering at less than maximum capability combined with excessive rear axle torque
(in my house these perverse control inputs are known as Clarksons)

[Greg Locock]

The lowest linear range understeer I can remember for a road car is 1.5 deg/g, where 2 - 4 pretty much covers the gamut of desirability.

My predecessor at this job used to set up race cars and described being chased down pit lane by an irate driver after he'd dialled in too much neutrality. Over at Atlas there's a race engineer who says that one of the hard things is that if you don't have enough understeer the driver mistakes overcooking it for understeer. I can't remember the details.

[sosic2121]

Theres more Toyota engineering in this than the Supra

nice one
Best part about new Supra is all those engineers talking about creating perfect car

[Phil]

I’m not sure i’m sold. It’s certainly looks very nice though. What interests me most is how good that build quality is.

I can live with owning an Exige - it’s light and raw. Those are the main selling points. I can live with the build quality too, because the car is unique and caters to a very small circle of enthusiasts and purist.

Add significant weight to the car and you are going away from that raw appeal and suddenly you are competing with the likes of Porsche. And those cars are simply on another level where build quality is concerned.

From what i heard, this car is aiming for a price tag below a 100k Euros - how realistic is that when the last few Exiges were over that price point? Where is the catch?

[RZS10]

They probably hope to sell higher volumes which would allow lower prices, according to a few articles it's supposed to start at 72k€ which gets you a 718 Cayman S ... or a used low mileage 911 from 2015-2017.

i just had a look at Porsche prices and i'm a bit shocked, last time i checked the 911 started well under 100k and the Turbo was at like 160k, now an empty base model 911 starts at 108k and the Turbo is 190k - when did that happen?

[NL_Fer]

A45 AMG 2.0 4 banger onder de hood, nice return to Lotus’ history. But now with proper supercar power.

[Morteza]

[Cold Fussion]

https://youtu.be/YTYYfG3FdDA

I really like the changes he made to the design.

[A13EX_f]

Have you test-driven the C8 yet?

It's very good, but isn't it setup to understeer with the standard chassis settings despite being mid-engined?

I am sure the Lotus will be much more neutral out of the box in typical Lotus fashion, without having to tinker with swaybars, spring rates or the like as Corvette enthusiasts may feel they "need" to do.

Hopefully the Emira will succeed at taking sales from Porsche, especially with Geely handling the "boring stuff" like switchgear which Lotus were not traditionally terribly good at.

...Journalists always rave more about cars that have spot-on neutral chassis settings out of the box -- be it the Alpine A110 (lift-off oversteer ahoy by L'argus at the Nordschliefe or on Best Motoring: "very sharp handling, great fun"), Lotus Evora, or a humble Ford Fiesta ST, EP3 Civic Type R or Peugeot 205 GTi -- so it does seem strange that a manufacturer like Chevrolet would deliberately set understeer, knowing that this will attract a lot of criticism and reduce the fondness and hype with which the car is received.

But the journalists do have a fair point in that is annoying to have a car that needs to be modified out of the box, just to perform how it should do in the first place. So they rightly praise cars which are 'correct' with their factory settings.

When GM owned lotuse and the vx220 / opel speedster was released it came with skinny front tyres to give the car safer handling characteristics (understeer)

[Rodak]

When I started racing FF1600 the (used) Van Diemen I had understeered like a pig. Nothing we did made much of a difference and I started to believe the problem was me. The light finally shone; new Bilstein gas shocks and the car was brilliant. Lesson well learned. I really hate understeer, as you wait and wait to get around the bend......

[Morteza]

Henry has been busy

[lucafo]

Not about Lotus Emira, but Lotus.
Lotus tuned the Omega engine in Brazil around 1994. It was the most powerful engine in Brazil at that time.
Searching for that I found that there were a Omega Lotus limited edition around the world also.
So Lotus and GM had some technical partnership for a while.


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[Greg Locock]

GM owned Lotus for 7 years.