5 model families in the catalog.
1962–1975
Lotus Elan: The Car That Made Chapman's Philosophy Pay
Colin Chapman built his reputation on a maxim he repeated until it became doctrine: simplify, then add lightness. By the early 1960s he had proved the idea on the track with a string of championship-winning single-seaters, but Lotus's road-car business was a much shakier proposition. The beautiful, fibreglass-monocoque…
1966–1975
Lotus Europa: Chapman's Mid-Engine Experiment for the Road
By the mid-1960s, mid-engined layouts had already proven themselves on the racetrack, and Colin Chapman wanted to know whether that same layout could work as an everyday road car rather than a competition special. The result, launched in 1966, was the Europa: a low, wedge-profiled two-seat coupe built around a steel…
1976–2004
Lotus Esprit: The Wedge That Learned to Swim
When Giorgetto Giugiaro's Italdesign studio showed a silver, impossibly angular concept on the Lotus stand at the 1972 Turin motor show, few could have guessed that the shape would become one of the defining silhouettes of 1970s automotive design. Giugiaro was in the middle of his 'folded paper' period, applying the…
1996–2021
Elise, Exige, Evora: How an Aluminium Tub Saved Lotus's Sports-Car Soul
By the early 1990s, Lotus had spent two decades building increasingly expensive, increasingly complex flagship cars, and the small, light, entry-level sports car that had made Chapman's name, the spirit of the original Elan, had effectively disappeared from the range. The company that revived it did so with an…
2021–present
Lotus Emira: The Last Combustion Car, Built Like the First
When Lotus unveiled the Emira on 6 July 2021, the company did something few manufacturers ever do with a brand-new sports car: it told buyers, from the very first press release, that this would be the last one of its kind the company would ever build. Lotus was explicit that the Emira would be its final…