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Old Dec 8, 2009 | 05:37 PM
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AllEuro
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Default Just drove the Lotus Evora!

Here's the car:
downsized_1208091229a.jpg


What an interesting experience, but first some information for those unfamiliar with the evora. This is Lotus' first new car in almost a decade and designed to basically compete with the 911 and similar cars. It has back seats unlike the Elise/Exige, but they will be most useful for people without legs. The engine is a midmounted toyota V6 motor making ~270hp. Lotus USA was offering test drives of a euro-spec model as the US models have not been released. This event was associated with the Evora release party, which occurs in the East and West coast. I went to a dealer outside of philly for this event.

I spend about 15 minutes driving the car on suburban roads, so I was unable to really wind it out. It was quite Lotus-like--rather raw in some aspects, but overall a nice vehicle. The brakes were super touchy and the shifter was horrible. The steering however was the best I ever experienced, though I couldn't really experience the handling. It did have a decent ride though, just a little better than the crossfire, IMO. The engine was interesting. Around town and below 4k rpms, it was rather weak. The crossfire has more pep around town. However, I did a 2nd gear romp up to 6k rpms and so after 4k rpms, the car really took off. It felt great and sounded exotic. More like an NSX and less like a camry. All in all, around town the car was ok. I was definitely not in love with it after the drive. But I suspect driving the car in an environoment where I could really push it would likely really wake the car up.
 
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