Lotus, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their headquarters and factory in Hethel, an English town now synonymous within the motoring circle more or less as Lotusville, the sports car maker will be rolling out some limited run units called Blue & Orange Edition, though they wouldn’t specify exactly how limited.
That name may be a little too on the nose and lacks mystique or ambiguity, the car and the anniversary cements Lotus’ storied history, and the Evora 400 upon which it is based wears the honour well, as it is said to be one of Lotus’ most rounded and accomplished products.
Visually, too, the orange and blue paint scheme lends a touch of approachability to the Evora 400, a car that we’re so used to seeing in either yellow or red mixed in with black. The colours were selected by Lotus fans on social media who polled on which curated designs would be used to mark the occasion. The colour combination harkens back to the 1960s when several Lotus racing cars wore the livery.
The special edition Evora 400 also has an interior that’s been customised to tastefully match the exterior finish, teaming black leather upholstery with orange contrast stitching. Lotus has also fitted it with black forged alloys and red brake calipers.
Jean-Marc Gales, CEO of Group Lotus plc said, “Any one of the designs in the poll would have been a worthy winner. So now that the poll has finished and with thousands of votes cast, we have decided that the winner will make it into production. We only plan to build 10 of these Evora 400 sports cars in total so with their rarity, I expect them to quickly become very desirable.”
The oily bits of the car are identical to the standard Evora 400, where a mid-mounted 3.5-litre supercharged V6 engine produces 298kW (400hp, hence the name) and 410Nm of torque. All that shove in a car that weighs just 1,395kg means an acceleration time of 4.1 seconds to reach 100km/h from rest and a top speed of 300km/h.
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