2017 Lotus Evora 400
Transcript- This Lotus is the fastest, most sophisticated, most refined car they've ever made.
[ENGINE REVVING]
Lotus is back after a three-year absence. Now you can buy the Lotus Evora 400 here in the United States. But if you think it's just the old Evora S with a little more power, think again. 2/3 of the parts are new. It has an all-new interior, and the engine is changed with the new supercharger, which brings us to the 400. It means-- you guessed it-- 400 horsepower.
I was starting off in the default mode. You can feel it cuts the revs short a couple from red line. All right. Enough of that. Let's try sport. We went 110 on the back straight. It tops out at 186 miles per hour. It goes 0 to 60 in 4.1 seconds.
You know, you have a mid-engine car. The engines is in the rear. You're always wary of losing the back end if you do anything like turn the wheel under braking. This doesn't have any indication of doing that.
There are new brakes, now two-piece rotors with an aluminum hat in the center, cast iron on the outside. The tires are bigger as well. It's 20 millimeters wider in rear and 235s in front. The US spec car is slightly heavier than the European one because of the side airbags. But it's only 3,153 pounds. By comparison, a Corvette Z06 is about 400 pounds heavier.
And if 3,153 pounds is too heavy for you, you can buy a titanium exhaust, carbon fiber roof, front splitter, rear diffuser, and other panels to save weight. And you can even delete the air conditioning at no cost. Or if you hate children, you can get rid of the rear seats. The interior is totally new and so much the better. The door sill is two inches lower and narrower, and the foot box is wider.
So getting in and out of the Evora 400 is a lot like getting in and out of a normal car, something you couldn't do in a Lotus before. Of course, there are still a few charming Lotus-like qualities. The LCD information screens to the right and left of the tacometer and speedometer, for instance, are invisible when I'm wearing my polarized sunglasses. The side mirrors-- the left one doesn't move far enough out for my taste. The right one has a tiny sliver of it obscured by the bodywork.
It's just those tiny things where you go, didn't they think of that? Well, no, they didn't. But the good news is they got everything else right. This is the kind of car that gets me really excited because no matter what you're doing, whenever you get behind the wheel, it feels special. It feels involved. It makes you remember everything you love about driving.
The big difference with the Evora 400, besides more power, is everything that was terrible about the old Evora is gone. And as such, this is the best car Lotus has ever made.
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