Esprit, the Only New Lotus Under Development

Words like speechless, stunning and incredible were all used by the automotive press for Lotus’ stand at the 2010 Paris Auto Show. Their stand included five brand new cars which did away with the light-weight mentality in order to take the brand into more luxurious and performance market branch. We all wandered however how Lotus was going to build all that, plus a rebadged city runaround.

Now it has been revealed that the only model undergoing development is the range-topping Esprit, according to Lotus sources quoted by Autocar magazine. The new Esprit should however keep lightness as it’s focus, with a total weight around the 3,300 pound (1,495 kg) mark.

We do however realize that 3,300 is not necessarily light, not now and especially not in 2013. However the 550 horsepower (410 kW) the car is estimated to produce more than makes up for this. The same V8 engines might produce as much as 620 horsepower in more focused, R versions. Coupled to the engine will be a new seven-speed gearbox.

Lotus promises that the future generation will be most environmentally friendly ever, with an estimated 250 grams of CO2 coming out of the exhaust every 100 kilometers.

Here at autoevolution we have split opinions about Lotus ditching the lightweight approach to build different cars in order to get a share of the high-end supercar market. This is why we wanted to see what our readers’ opinion was on this matter.

Thus, we created a poll with this subject. The result of the poll shows that our users' opinions are also split on the matter, 51 percent seeing it as a bad thing, while 48 percent being optimistic about a Lotus supercar.