Lotus Emira SE Turbo review: The last great petrol car?
Lotus leans on Mercedes for its potent petrol swansong, resulting in savage speed without the daily discomfort
[SINGAPORE] If combustion power is on a helter skelter to irrelevance, at least it’s going down with a shout in cars like the Lotus Emira. Especially in hardcore SE Turbo form, where it whooshes, whistles and crackles along the way.
SE Turbo is an old tag that Lotus uses aptly here. The “SE” stands for “special equipment”, which in the Emira’s case means sport suspension; a sharper driving mode for those glorious days when you venture onto the track; beefed-up brakes; a launch control system to give you a fighting chance against electric cars in a drag race; and an exhaust that controls its shoutiness better than my niblings do.
Mounted behind the seats in this Emira, you’ll find – you guessed it – a turbocharged engine. It’s a 2.0-litre four-cylinder, which doesn’t sound like much, but it comes from Mercedes-AMG, where men in lab coats managed to wring 406 horsepower from it. You can’t actually see the turbocharger, because when you lift the Lotus’ engine cover the only things visible are a plastic shroud and the car’s tiny boot, but I bet it’s the size of a watermelon.
Hitherto you could only have your Emira with a supercharged 3.5-litre V6 that came out two years ago, but Lotus apparently had the lighter AMG unit in mind when it laid out the car, so the SE Turbo is arguably the one you’re meant to have if you consider yourself a driving fan.
Either way, the Emira itself marked a turning point for Lotus by being usable, well-finished and pretty, two out of three things its earlier cars often forgot to be. As a matter of fact, even the harsher SE Turbo can be surprisingly civil.
I would have liked blind spot monitors, but the Emira is otherwise a doddle to drive every day. There are actual storage spaces in the cabin, meaning you have somewhere to deposit your phone, keys, wallet and so on. It has electrically adjustable seats. The air-con copes well with our heat. There’s cruise control. There’s even a touchscreen that supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU
Friday, 2 pm
Lifestyle
Our picks of the latest dining, travel and leisure options to treat yourself.
And if the engine’s boisterous voice is a prominent part of the experience, at least your ears aren’t subjected to that much road noise. All of that might seem basic, but it’s a huge leap from the days when a Lotus interior smelled of glue and had less carpeting than Homer Simpson’s head.
There’s even a decent sound system from British audiophile company KEF, albeit with slightly muddy bass. But the real sonic entertainment comes from the engine itself. There’s plenty to tickle the ears, between the whooshing of the turbo’s dump valve and the whistling of its wastegate, which are constant reminders that something exciting is going on just behind you. Add the bellowing from the exhaust and some dramatic popping (especially in Track mode), and you’ve got a soundtrack that makes the small hairs stand.
With the sound, there’s fury. The SE Turbo punches hard from standstill, but once the revs climb past 4,000 rpm, it goes from fast to fiendish in a hurry, piling on speed like it’s trying to honour its Formula 1 ancestors.
At the same time, this is a Lotus, so it handles with grace and precision. There’s hydraulic power steering instead of the now-common electric setup, for the sake of better feel, and your reward for putting up with a busy, sometimes jiggly ride over bumps is a taut, agile chassis.
The SE Turbo also pulls big G-forces through corners effortlessly, so you’ll want to be on a racing track to probe its limits, because doing so involves some lairy speeds.
Yet, the whole package feels sized for real roads. Despite being a relatively wide car, it’s easy to place and easy to thread through traffic.
In fact, the Emira reminds me a bit of a slightly scaled-down Ferrari. It certainly has the low, wide stance of one, with the same sense that its body was shrink-wrapped over the oily bits. Yet, Lotus being Lotus, the multitude of scoops and vents on the body aren’t there to look impressive, but to take in air or bleed it out where it’s needed, either for cooling or to generate the downforce that stabilises the car at speed.
Overall, the SE Turbo may be fast, focused and loud in all the right ways, but its real achievement is how much it stays faithful to Lotus’ roots while actually being something you’d want to live with.
Of course, there are probably purists to whom an everyday Lotus is a contradiction in terms. But Lotus’ previous strategy of building brilliant but uncompromising cars nearly drove the company into the ground, and the Emira represents a new way forward. That might not sit well with the hardliners, but there’s usually room for purists on that downward slide to irrelevance.
Lotus Emira SE Turbo Engine 1,991 cc turbo in-line four Power 406 hp at 6,750 rpm Torque 480 Nm at 4,500 rpm Gearbox 8-speed dual-clutch automatic 0 to 100 kmh 4.0 seconds Top speed 290 kmh Efficiency 9.1 L/100 km Agent Wearnes Automotive Price S$548,800 excluding COE Available Now
Copyright SPH Media. All rights reserved.
