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Lotus, at last, is bound for the big time. On the 22 July at the London motor show, it will reveal this revolutionary £45,000, mid-engined, 2+2 coupé, codenamed the Lotus Eagle.
This is the car that Lotus believes will take it right to the heart of Porsche territory and transform Lotus Cars into the vibrant, 5000-cars-a-year manufacturing business that successive bosses have wanted for so long.
The 280bhp, 3.5-litre V6-powered coupé is being launched in both 2+2 and 2+0 forms. It takes Lo...Read the full article

I am really not sure.  I am sure handling and ride will be the best or very close, so it is a given with an Elise based car.  If the engine loses the lazy character of the Camry then it should be a great powerplant.  The interior looks pretty cool, as long as it is well made then that should get a thumbs up too.

My only area of 'ummmness' is the styling.  The front is pretty striking but the back just looks like a fatter Elise, and the sides are a bit bangle.  I think for the styling I need to see it in the metal but it looks promising.  I think Lotus will need to put a lot of effort into getting this car seen in the far east, as they are not going to sell too many in a recession hit USA and UK.

if they want to compete with Porsche  thay need to sort out the water leaks and rattles, nice looking car though....

Does anyone else have a problem with a £45K fibreglass car? A £20-25K Elise made out of old margerine cartons sounds feasible to me but if I was spending more money I think that I'd like steel, please, or even aluminium. Fibreglass just reminds me of all those old Lotuses which were really not too far away from being glorified kit cars.

I suppose the bottom line is whether they can convince enough potential 911/Cayman buyers to jump the fence and I think this might be tough, especially if we have a recession and people start making safer choices.

Quite nice looking though and I'm sure it will be great to drive.

RobotBoogie:

Does anyone else have a problem with a £45K fibreglass car?

good point, why can they not use carbon fibre,   

 

Hmmm, cut me in half and you'll see Lotus in my blood.  This year however I sold my Lotus Elise and bought a quite amazing Cayman S.  It's safe, reliable, extremely well built, has a "Porsche" engine and last week the brakes saved me from getting involved in a multicar pile up on the motorway....so worth £47k then. 

 The Lotus does look like a bloated Elise and the interior looks great, BUT it is fibre glass and if anyone remembers the Eclat interiors were plush, but the glue it was stuck together with,  was useless.

So in all this Lotus is a bloated, mini cab engined, plastic evolution of an Elise...for £45k!  

hmmmm

Isn't this the way this sort of thing should be done:

http://www.artega.de/index.php?av=gb

I don't get Lotus, they seem stuck between focused track cars and half baked road cars. What I mean by that is they used to provide what were very good comfortable road cars with all the mod cons of the time, I know reliability was sometimes and issue, now you don't get carpets.

This new car resembles a larger Elise. What wrong with differentiating between the models with a different look, but still being unmistakably Lotus.

Doesn't look cool enough.  In profile, it looks too tall, wheelbase looks too short, too much like an Elise.  I'm confused.  What is it?  A development of the Elise into a longer, 2+2, or a new car?  The original Espirit was a stunning car visually.  And it's evolutionary models were still quite sensational.  This just doesn't look spectacular enough.  Oh.  And it's fibreglass still.  Hmmmm.  Are we hoping for too much these days?  As someone above pointed out, if Artega or whoever can do it..........      

I'm a bit confused on my verdict on this one.. I really wanna love it,but the styling isn't as special as I'd hoped it would be.

Like it was said , the front looks nice , the side not really that nice and the rear looks like yet another derivative of the Elise. While the elise is a lovely car , isn't this sypposed to show everyone how lotus is not mono-dimensional in terms of design?

Though I want to see it in the metal first , on first impressions I'll give it a 7/10 in terms of design. 

However,(on the comparison above) to be fair, I think Lotus wanted to tap into the sales of the class with a car that was ride/handling oriented whilst Artega wanted to match Porsche in every aspect( handling/ride compromise as well as class,design and practicality).

 

I like everything about it. Except the weight. 1400kg? What happened to 'adding lightness'?

The following text from the article intrigues me..."and enough rear legroom for a 5ft-tall female passenger."

I would love to know what design quirke renders the rear seats unsuitable for a 5ft-tall male passenger. Makes the eyes water just thinking about it.