Why are we still even having this argument?
Yes, it’s heresy, the end of the enthusiast vehicle is upon us. Nobody will ever make a truly sporty car anymore. Lotus. The Bastion. The distilled essence of the sports car is now making an SUV, an EV at that one. How horrifying.
Should you find yourself on the company of a person who thinks this way, please, welcome them to 2022, introduce them slowly to the Porsche Cayenne and the Aston Martin DBX. That way they won’t die of shock when they discover this is neither new, nor should it be met with about the same cornucopia of emotions as discovering you have a twin brother…in prison.
It will take a while for them to understand that “simplify and add lightness” is extremely difficult when a mile of range requires about 4lbs of batteries according to someone a lot more competent and experienced than the average Forbes blogger. Besides which, Lotus must seriously be tired of walking the line between genius and insolvency that all low-volume sports car manufacturers had to. And, having gone through partnerships with Toyota, GM, A holding’s company, and Proton before ending up seated next to Volvo and their former owners on Geely’s portfolio, they can’t on good consciousness say that their business model has worked out quite the same way that Morgan’s has.
Of course, Geely is a multi-billion-dollar company intent of continuing their successful breaking into the western automotive industry. And buying a manufacturer just because it looks nice on the portfolio is generally not a good business model, ask GM. Geely wants a return on investment, and if they don’t, their shareholders certainly do. So trying to make Elise II: Electric Boogaloo (Is this joke going away? I don’t think it’s going away.) will not be quite enough.
The more interesting part of all of this is the sharing. Geely is already working on an EV SUV for Volvo spinoff Polestar. Now the Polestar 3 will be built in the US and we’re not quite sure what it looks like, but I would be very surprised if Geely allowed a duplication of efforts on all of that R&D. So we may actually get a preview of what that will look like in terms of design, performance, and battery capacity before a formal release.
But if your time traveler still foams at the mouth at the mere sight of a Macan, just point their eyesight about two inches to the left and into the rapturous, uncompromising praise of the journalists that have been allowed a go on the Lotus Emira prototype. 400 Horsepower, 180 MPH, and handling that elicits wistful flashbacks to the “Lotus DNA” of the halcyon days.
Just don’t tell them that it weighs 1400 kilos and has such luxuries as traction control and air conditioning because he’s liable to run away screaming, run into a Lamborghini Urus, and finally die of a heart attack.
