This is the Lotus concept they’d rather we forgot

This isn’t a Lamborghini, this is the Lotus Elan concept from the infamous 2010 Paris motor show where the British sports car manufacturer tried to launch five new cars at once. This concept bears precisely zero resemblance to its tiny droptop Sixties namesake, but the name sounds cool and the rights were sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere.

It was an amazing moment – no one really knew what was going to happen at the Lotus press conference and suddenly out of nowhere appeared a number of lower-runged A-list celebrities, like Naomi Campbell, Brian May and Mickey Rourke. There was chaos. The wraps came off a bulky new Elise, there was a reborn Esprit, a four-door saloon/limo thing called Eterne, a grand tourer called the Elite and this new take on the Elan.

In a word, no. The brains behind the strategy was company boss Dany Bahar, who had previously worked at Red Bull and Ferrari and wanted to elevate Lotus to rival the storied Italian powerhouse. Unfortunately he got into a bit of a disagreement with the company owners over his helicopter expenses. A terrible shame, really, because someone had been forced to go out and find a tonne or five of clay in deepest Norfolk and chisel these things up. It was easy to get carried along with the enthusiasm and optimism; you really wanted to believe that Lotus was on the up and great things were going to happen. 

Not immediately. You could argue that the whole Paris 2010 snafu has been good for Lotus in the long run. Sure, we didn’t get this deliciously wedgy yellow Elan, but the company did get sold off to deep-pocketed Chinese carmaker Geely, which runs Volvo and the London taxi people. Company owner Li Shufu is much less flashy than Dany Bahar and has a habit of making companies quite successful so far. 

It was set to be a mid-engined two-seater (with optional +2 arrangement, apparently) to take on the might of the Porsche 911 Turbo. No sniggering at the back there. We dare say the styling was a touch derivative, but there were nice clean lines, decent proportions, a solid stance… nothing we wouldn’t kill for in 2021. It was supposed to go on sale in 2013, a car that then-Lotus CEO Dany Bahar said would “make you drive the long way home”.

Well, technically the engine was under the rear hatch behind the seats... It sounded like it was going to be a great set-up, though – a 4.0-litre V6 engine with a 7,800rpm rev limit mounted mid-ships, optional KERS hybrid system available if you wanted an extra boost, rear-wheel drive, seven-speed dual clutch automatic and a lightweight carbon fibre-infused chassis. 

It did sound admittedly impressive on paper – 0–62mph in 3.5secs, 444bhp, a top speed of 190mph and a kerb weight of 1,295kg. Of course, the mooted price was £100,000+, which rather concentrates the mind. The performance might have been worth it, but do rich people want to shell out big cash for an expensive supercar built in a leaky shed in Norfolk by a man called Kevin? They’d need more than Mickey and Naomi to help with that. 

We definitely won’t see this Elan appearing any time soon, and you can rather imagine that no one dare say its name out loud round the corridors of Lotus’s Hethel HQ. That said, there have been rumblings in recent years that the current set of bosses have been considering a reintroduction of the Elan name, but much more in keeping with the spirit of the original. Might we see a Porsche Boxster-rivalling convertible on the scene with an Elan badge soon? Perhaps we’ll reserve excitement until we see a production version…