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By Jonathan Crouch
Introduction
Back in 2009, the Evora was the car charged with broadening Lotus' customer base to include the kind of people who'd pay serious money for a serious German sportscar. To make an impact, it had to match quality and comfort with the traditional exhilarating Lotus driving experience. It did. Here's the info on buying a used one.
Models
(3.5 V6 supercharged petrol [standard,S,GTE,GT410,GT430,390 Sport,420 Sport,430 Cup])
History
Back in 2009, it had been a long time since we'd had a Lotus to properly take on Porsche and the most serious of its sportscar German rivals. Since the demise of the Esprit back in 2003, the Norfolk maker had sold us Elise-based track day toys - cars you used on high days and holidays - but little else. The Vauxhall-engined Europa of 2007 was a first attempt to produce an everyday sportscar, but wasn't really a credible contender: this car was. The Lotus Evora.
From launch, it was the world's one and only mid-engined 2+2 sportscar. Delivering the perfect handling balance you only get with a mid-engined configuration and combining it with the practicality of two small rear seats had in 2009 proved to be beyond everyone but the engineers from Hethel managed it, combining this with traditional Lotus attributes of lightness, suppleness and total driver involvement.
All Evoras use a supercharged 3.5-litre Toyota V6 engine. From launch, only a straightforward 280hp version of this was available with a 6-speed manual gearbox, but in 2010, an Evora S model with an uprated 350hp version of this powerplant arrived. Plus Lotus introduced the option of an IPS auto gearbox. Various special editions were subsequently introduced, the most sought-after being the GTE model (only six of which were made in right hand drive, with 16 manufactured in left hand drive).
Lotus continued to work on the mainstream Evora range too. The standard and S models were replaced by faster GT410 and GT430 variants, which arrived in 2017 with 410 and 430hp respectively. The GT430 lasted only until 2019 but the GT410 was made all the way to the end of production in 2021. The final production run was based around three 'Final Edition' variants, the '390 Sport', the '420 Sport' and the '430 Cup'.
What You Get
The Evora's designers had the unenviable task of reconciling the need for a bewitching exterior with the car's 2+2 seating configuration and the stringent requirements of modern crash tests. The result was an elegantly proportioned car that lacked the curvy aggression of the Elise but still managed to look taut and purposeful. The real innovation lay beneath the bodywork where the firm's extruded aluminium Variable Vehicle Architecture was employed to reduce weight and maximise rigidity. Under this design, the roof and body panels were stress-bearing and attached directly to the chassis helping the Evora achieve its modest kerb weight.
This car's packaging was also noteworthy. Its wheelbase was only slightly longer than Lotus' little Elise but it managed to cram in its mid-mounted V6 engine along with rear seats that, Lotus insisted, were large enough for passengers of up to five feet in height. You'll probably prefer to restrict their use to small children on short journeys or uncomplaining friends desperate for a lift home from the pub. Or perhaps, do without the rear berths completely by finding a car whose original owner specified the 2-seater-only 2+0 version. Going that route would offer you a bit more luggage space. With the 2+2 version, there's a necessarily compact 160-litre boot that's said to be capable of carrying a set of golf clubs, but a visual appraisal of the space suggests you may have to melt them down and pour them in. A couple of soft sports bags should be fine though.
At least the interior of the car looks spacious and sitting in this car really feels like an event. Certainly, the standard of build and cabin design is a major departure from the stripped down feel Lotus has become known for, if not quite Porsche quality. There's a tasteful two tone effect to the leather-trimmed fascia, though the dials do suffer from reflections in strong sunlight. You'll also have to squint a bit to see out of the tiny rear window, which makes finding a car whose original owner paid extra for parking sensors near-essential. Still, the driver's seat is supportive and the wheel adjusts for both reach and rake, so it should be possible for just about anyone to get comfortable. Getting in and out, always a Lotus issue, should be relatively straightforward too, thanks to a driving position that's 65mm higher than the Elise, plus lower sills and taller doors.
What You Pay
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What to Look For
The 3.5-litre supercharged Toyota V6 has proved to be pretty reliable and we haven't come across any serious faults with either the engine or the manual or automatic gearboxes linked with it. This powerplant's mid-engine layout has a cable-operated shift that did throw up some early problems however, so with a manual gearbox model, you'll need to make sure that the gear lever slots easily and precisely through the gate. If you sense any hesitation or slack, it will indicate the need for cable adjustment or replacement. This really only applies to the earliest Evoras and on most models, it would be an issue that's already been attended to.
Some owners report the need for an oil pipe upgrade and you can expect a manual gearbox clutch to last around 50,000 miles. If you're planning to visit track days with the car, you need to assign a budget for replacement Eagle F1 tyres. And possibly for replacement brake discs, calipers and pads, which are sourced from AP Racing. Removing the pollen filter is something that often gets forgotten in servicing but it's an easy 5 minute task and helps maintain the car's ventilation system. Rear tailgate rubber bump stops sometimes push into the body panels. Look out for damp in the front passenger foot well. And be aware that the air conditioning condenser often fails because it prone to being hit by road debris. Leather around the lower dash and the door sills can get easily scuffed.
Service intervals are every 9000 miles, with minor services costing about £500 and major services around £800, the latter required every four years. You should get the geometry of the car checked more frequently than that because even a little like kerbing will be enough to take the edge off this model's sharp handling.
Replacement Parts
(approx based on a 2015 Evora S - ex VAT) Lotus spares are agreeably cheap, as are servicing costs. The key complaint amongst Exige owners regarding replacement parts is the long wait for replacement body panels. Other spares are far more readily available. An oil filter will cost around £30, a set of spark plugs will set you back around £110 and an air filter costs around £35. A replacement clutch retails at around £440. Replacement AP Racing brake pads cost around £200 for the fronts and the same again for the rears. A replacement air conditioning condenser costs around £175 excluding fitting.
On the Road
Like the Elise, the Evora relies on Toyota for the contents of its engine bay but unlike the zingy 1.8-litre VVT-i engine in that impish roadster, the Evora's engine is a 3.5-litre V6 that has previously seen service in the Lexus RX350 luxury 4x4. An SUV engine? Hardly the kind of thing you'd associate with Lotus - but don't worry. This 276bhp unit was thoroughly revised to give it the edge that Evora customers were looking for. And a glorious V6 engine growl. Throttle response was sharpened through the use of a more sophisticated ECU and there was variable valve timing for both intake and exhaust cams to increase efficiency and flexibility. If you want more, the Sports pack (standard on the Evora S and on later models) gives you a dash-mounted 'Sport' button that sharpens the throttle response and gives you an extra 400rpm on top of the usual 6,600rpm allowed. Even without this option, with 340Nm of torque, there's no shortage of muscle - enough, in fact, to punch the Evora through 60mph in less than five seconds on the way to 162mph. Most will want the Evora S which upped engine output to 350hp; later models increased output even further - to between 390 and 430hp.
The 6-speed manual gearbox also comes courtesy of Toyota and most early customers specified it in extra-cost 'Sports' guise with shorter ratios from 3rd to 6th that will make quite a difference to the driving experience for press-on enthusiasts. A year after the start of production, an auto gearbox option was introduced. Light weight remains a Lotus keynote and though at 1382kgs, this car makes some of its rivals look portly, it's still 500kgs heavier than an Elise, which at last forced the Norfolk engineers to turn reluctantly to turn to the need for power steering assistance. What they produced in tresponse is a helm that makes the steering in other sports cars feel PlayStation-like by comparison. You can feel this car's astonishing grip all the way through every bend. It's brilliant.
Better still, there's a suspension set-up with this car that manages a balance of ride comfort and handling tautness that we simply wouldn't have believed before driving it. This car is more than two and a half times stiffer than an Elise and its Eibach springs and Bilstein dampers are set up more firmly but the bone-jarring ride this ought to produce is replaced by suspension so supple and absorbent that it shames that of some family cars - and makes this an impressive (and surprisingly refined) long distance cruiser. Yet this is also a set-up that on your favourite B-road, makes this Lotus one of the most dynamically capable cars in the world.
And one of the easiest to control, thanks to a traction control system that only cuts in when you really need it and 'understeer mitigation' technology that, even on damp roads, has this car turning into corners like a shark turning towards a meal. The result is, for us, a different league of user-friendly performance in the Evora's segment. A Ferrari or a Lamborghini might be fun on a dry test track but would you really look forward to trying to control one at full chat on a wet country road? In an Evora, reassured by astonishingly effective brakes, you'd relish the experience, and that's the difference.
Overall
The Evora was tasked with catapulting Lotus into a whole different sector of the market. Here, agile handling and exhilarating performance alone are not enough, needing to be married to superior build quality and sophisticated design. This car delivered in these last two areas better than any Lotus before it - but will that be enough to justify the money being charged for one of these?
You'll need to be a dedicated driver to answer yes, but if you are, there are plenty of other aspects to this car that will tempt you. The brilliant use of space in such a compact frame. The searing performance courtesy of the light weight. The stiff, safe bodyshell. But at the end of the day, what really matters is that in buying one of these, you'll have ownership of one of the world's greatest drivers' cars - at any price.
