Lotus Elise, Exige, Evora Production Ends

End of the road for Evora.

Today, Lotus said the last of the Elise, Exige and Evora sports cars were made. Their assembly lines will be dismantled to prepare for production of the new Lotus Emira mid-engine and last Lotus petrol-fueled (gasoline Yank) sports car. A total of 51,738 of the traditional rear-drive sports cars were built during the past 26 years.

Combined, they represent almost half of the total production of Lotus in its 73-year history. In addition, 9,715 sports cars were built for Lotus’ third-party clients, including GM and Tesla. (AutoInformed: Lotus Emira to Make US Debut with F1 Racer Jenson Button; Hazel Chapman Co-Founder of Lotus Dead at 94; Alpine and Lotus to Study Joint Development of an Electric Sports Car as Groupe Renault Restructures)

 From 1996 to 2000, the first-generation Elise and Exige sports cars were built in a small assembly hall at Hethel alongside the Lotus Esprit. The current assembly lines, installed in 2000, will be replaced with new accommodations in support of the all-new Emira factory. Full Emira production begins in the spring of 2022, after the prototype and test phases currently underway are completed. Production capacity of up to 5,000 units per year is based on a single shift. (AutoInformed: Chinese, Malaysian owned Lotus Engineering Expands Hethel)

The last examples of the Elise, Exige and Evora models are reserved for Lotus’ growing heritage collection. Joining the collection will be the last Elise, a Sport 240 Final Edition finished in Yellow and the last of 35,124 cars; the last Exige, a Cup 430 Final Edition in Heritage Racing Green – number 10,497; and the last Evora – a GT430 Sport finished in Dark Metallic Grey – the last of a production run of 6,117.

The Elise and Exige sports cars are built around the Lotus ‘small car platform.’ On the same platform, and also manufactured by Lotus at Hethel were the Opel Speedster / Vauxhall VX220 (7,200 cars built between 2000 and 2005) and the Tesla Roadster (2,515 cars built between 2007 and 2012). Therefore, including the Lotus 340R, Europa, 2-Eleven and 3-Eleven cars, this brings the total Lotus small car platform production volumes to 56,618 cars.