Nathan Pitman

There’s a special place in hell for people that post ‘photo videos’ to YouTube.

Just remove the panel entirely?

Spotted a black Elise Cup at about 4pm ish driving down the road between Great Holland’s and the Bracknell Sports centre. You flashed me and I flashed you back. Are you local? I was in my yellow Elise Cup.

In the US market the Evija will adopt the Rover Metro mirrors.

New stickers. Oh... and an extra plaque on the dash. Well I guess it's cheap PR!

Is there any more to be eeked from that power unit? Is more carbon even possible without replacing the clams themselves with carbon? Going firmly OT here.

Looks like an Elise boot lid. Why is there an Elise in the design studio?

You should see the water that escapes from an Elise when you open the doors after heavy rain.

The Fifth Gear feature on the Lotus Elise S1 inc interview with Julian Thomson refers to a new Lotus Elise breaking cover in 2020.

I’m fascinated to see what happens to the existing line up when this new car appears. Will it sit alongside, or will that be the end of all the existing cars? I’m also not sure that playing it safe will convince anyone to buy a Lotus over a Porsche (other than everyone already here).

During any period of serious investment in the future and R&D they are bound to be making huge losses. Still find it odd that there’s no sign of any marketing of the current excellent drivers cars, they could be offsetting some of those losses... that said I guess the crux of the problem is if they start a marketing push now they won’t be able to keep up with demand.

That’s the most insightful thing I’ve seen to date. Thanks for the link. That’s a pretty clear ‘sports cars only’ (for now). Surely with the next (affordable) car being as far away as 2021 (assuming no delays) they have to be considering some updates to the existing range?

Yup, I love this too. What we need is a direct line from TLF to Lotus Cars... @Bibs?

Thanks for the in depth reply @NedaSay, a couple of weeks you say?

I don't know much about car design, safety regulations or the such but I've been pondering whether Lotus could realistically deliver anything 'completely new' which gets anywhere close to the analog enjoyment you can extract from the current range without significant compromise? I'm sure that the new car due as a stop gap in 2020 (that's what I heard anyway) will look fantastic.., but how can it possibly measure up to current model range in all other areas? In some ways the lack of investment in Lotus over the years has been a blessing and a curse... Lotus has refined the current crop of models to perfection and have built a kind of timeless aesthetic amongst the Elise and Exige ranges in doing so. To better these machines on driver engagement, performance, cost of purchase and curb appeal is a tall order indeed. What's next is likely going to weigh more, sound less interesting, feel less involving and cost more... at which point, we're not the target audience anymore are we? I'd be delighted to be proven wrong, perhaps Lotus will do a Porsche and offer stripped back more analog versions of their comfortable 'everyone' sports cars, but if the prices are as eye watering as those offerings then I guess we'll just have to 'make do' (hardly) with the incredible cars we are currently all blessed with.