Lotus Emira is a deserving New Car of the Year winner

Building on the legacy of the iconic Lotus Elise, the Emira represents a new era for Lotus with enhancements in practicality, comfort and technology, and this is a crucial reason why AM's dealer readers voted for it to win the 2023 AM Award for New Car of the Year.

It’s the most accomplished Lotus road car yet, balancing a high level of driver engagement with the practicality of an everyday sports car.

The Lotus Emira sports car has been developed on a new lightweight bonded aluminium chassis and is available with a choice of two mid-mounted petrol engines. From launch, the Emira was offered as limitedproduction ‘First Edition’ model only, powered by the same 3.5-litre V6 as the brand’s Exige and Evora models.

Developing 400PS, it’s mated to a six-speed manual gearbox with a visible gear change mechanism and hydraulic power-assisted steering.

A turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine from AMG, the performance division of Mercedes-Benz, will make its way into the new Lotus sports car later this year.

Matt Windle, managing director of Lotus Cars, said: “The Emira is a game-changer for Lotus. It stands as a beacon of everything we have achieved to date in the transformation of the business, the embodiment of our progress. It is a highly significant milestone on our path to becoming a truly global performance car brand.” The Emira’s launch coincided with the brand’s shift to an agency model agreement with its retailers.

The changes come as part of a Vision80 strategy which has brought the introduction of the £2 million Evija hypercar, the introduction of a new retail corporate identity and the development of a new £100m manufacturing facility at its Hethel headquarters and technology centre at Warwick