Lotus are this year’s main sponsor of the Goodwood Festival of Speed and for the deal they get to design the sculpture outside Goodwood House and take up somewhere around 500m2 of stand space. Classic Team Lotus are also at the festival in force with 40 classic F1 cars and the F1 team plus Lotus International Rally team are on display with the E20 and Exige R-GT respectively.
Lotus have focussed this event on cars which are current or soon to be in production plus a celebration of 50th birthday of the Lotus Elan with Evo editor Harry Metcalfe’s Elan Sprint and veteran Lotus racer Malcolm Ricketts’ Elan. Also, Lotus have the Evora out in force with a road going Evora S in nightfall blue, Evora GTE both in silver and motorsport black and gold livery plus an Evora GT4. The new supercharged/chargecooled Elise S is here in chrome orange and the new Exige S in both coupe and Geneva showcar Roadster is available to view.
Lotus also have the visually impressive vertical matchup of the Lotus F1 Team F1 car and T125 mounted together on a rotating installation and Originals have a mini-store with a very good range of merchandise available for fans to buy from here. They also have the new Lotus cycles including a not seen before retro bike attracting lots of interest from the Thursday crowds. Lotus Engineering again showcase their technology demonstrator with the cutaway Evora showing in detail the range extender technology.
Today is the ‘Moving Motorshow’ with potential customers able to drive the hill themselves however Friday to Sunday is the Festival of Speed proper with some 40 Lotus cars heading up the hill at various times. Lotus Le Mans hero Johnny Mowlem will be tackling the climb in the T125 and slowing down (!) to an Evora GTE, Lotus dynamics gurus Gavan Kershaw and Matt Becker will showcase the Evora GTC racer and Exige S respectively and fresh from airborne rallying in Belgium, Bernando Sousa will drive the Exige R-GT. F1 star Martin Donnelly is once again re-united with the car which nearly killed him in Jerez, the Type 102 and Italian star Giani Giudici will take the other Evora GTE. Classic Team Lotus will take a variety of their stable and we expect to be well entertained by the classic racers who never seem to hold back on the hill climb.
If you’re coming along over the next few days and you’re a Lotus enthusiast you’re in for a very enjoyable show but if not, enjoy the images in our gallery and let us know what you think in the comments below or our forum thread.
Photos courtesy of GKP.
