Lotus Emira 420 Sport review: has the Emira arrived now all its rivals are dead?

Hasn’t life just got a lot easier for the Lotus Emira?

It has. All its rivals have vanished, just in time for the Lotus to get faster.

How did the Emira scare everyone else away?

The Lotus Emira seems to have woken up in a sports car post-nuke wasteland. When it launched in 2022 it had to compete with top-end Porsche Caymans. Unthinkably, that’s now dead and its, um, controversial electric replacement is on hiatus.

The Emira had to contend with the Alpine A110S and A110R. Genius little tadpoles which – embarrassingly for Lotus – were actually lighter. But the Alpine has ceased production. And the wider, meaner-looking new A110 will be battery-powered.

It must have some competitors?

There’s no Jaguar F-Type (no Jags at all, come to think of it). TVR is MIA. The rumoured ultimate Toyota GR Supra with a proper BMW M Division engine never materialised, then Toyota dropped the Supra altogether in Britain. Even the BMW M2 CS has dropped off the order book.

Fact is, if you’ve got somewhere beyond £90,000 to spend on a new sports car in Britain – the sports car’s spiritual home – you either buy an Emira, or save up harder.

But Lotus hasn’t rested on that?

Nope, it’s been busy, despite what you’ve no doubt read about job cuts at its Norfolk base and flatlining demand for its electric SUV and saloon.

The Eletre and Emeya were supposed to herald a new era of Lotus EVs. Now the Eletre has been hybridised and the Emira is no longer ‘the final combustion powered Lotus’.

What’s happened to the Emira to create this new ‘420 Sport’?

Power has been added. Guess how much it has. What you might not have guessed is the engine Lotus has used. You’d expect the fastest car in the range to use the biggest motor – the 3.5-litre supercharged Toyota V6.

The 420 Sport is actually powered by the 2.0-litre Mercedes 4cyl turbo powerplant. The engine from the A45 AMG – the most powerful hot hatch in the world. You can buy it with the 360hp or 400hp in other Emiras, but this is the first time it’s been allowed to outpunch the V6.

How fast are we talking?

According to Lotus, it’s the fastest four-cylinder car on sale today. Thanks to 420hp and 310lb ft, 0-62mph takes 3.9 seconds, and it’ll go on to a 186mph top speed. In a world of sub-2.5s EVs those aren’t wild numbers, but on the road it certainly feels more urgent than a normal Emira Turbo, if not what you’d call savage.

But the engine does have character – that tenacious ball-of-energy AMG character is here and the turbo wheezing and puffing is a real presence in the car. Is it musical? No. Now you can’t buy a new Cayman GTS 4.0 for £25,000 less, that doesn’t sting as much. Buy a used one you say? There’s an idea…

So that’s the ‘420’ bit taken care of. What about the ‘Sport’?

Many detail tweaks have been applied to pep up the Emira into something sharper. Literally, in the case of the looks. There’s a jutting front splitter, extended rear ducktail, huge flared sills and extra scoops on the side intakes to gulp air into the engine bay.

You can optionally spec much glossy carbon fibre and add hand-painted pinstripes. Expensive, but it gives the already stunning Emira a sprinkling of boutique hypercar excess.

In fact, on its spindlier new wheels and with its louvered Esprit-style tailgate, the 420 Sport looks pretty sensational. This might be the best-looking car on sale today.

One note – the slatted rear deck slashes rear visibility. You might think that’s a worthwhile sacrifice because it’s dutifully venting heat from the engine, but 4cyl Emiras bury their engine under a sealed scuba-suit, so the slats are only for show.

Is this all merely cosmetic?

Lotus says the aero changes add 25kg of downforce over an Emira Turbo. Yet it’s been carefully honed to not increase pesky drag. We suspect it’s mainly visual shorthand to tell people ‘I’ve bought the fastest one’. But it looks terrific.

I was hoping for more…

You can now save 25kg with something called the Lightweight Handling Pack. It sheds 25 bags of sugar, dropping the 420 Sport to 1,430kg. Still not an Exige-style featherweight, but getting close to where the Cayman GT4 used to tip scales.

Chiefly it lightens your wallet: it costs a whopping £12,900. In return you get carbon trim, a lighter battery, an exhaust made from titanium and most intriguingly, adjustable Multimatic dampers with a 5mm ride height drop.

Multimatic supplies suspension to Ferrari’s Assetto Fiorano pack cars, and engineered the Ford GT. It’s a top-tier name in very fast car componentry.

Sounds promising!

You can’t adjust the suspension from the touchscreen, or a button inside. This is old school tuning. To tweak the dampers, turn the front wheels to full lock, and unbolt the rear wheels entirely. There you’ll have eleven clicks to play with to find your ideal setting for track or road.

We tested a car in a Lotus-recommended halfway setting… and it’s firm. Noticeably tauter and more unyielding than the standard Emira. Which, if you want a more focused, potentially trackable sports car, is exactly what you want. If you want a daily, leave the Handling Pack on the shelf.

The car’s body control is tighter than an Emira V6 I drove in Wales a few months ago, which was an oddly remote experience – not alive and dainty like you’d hope from a Lotus. This one’s grittier and more responsive, but you lose a chunk of comfort along the way. It tramlines a little more, but is never wayward.

Lotus says buyers are likely to experiment with settings and share them on owners’ forums once they find a preferred sweet spot. This is nerdy, but perhaps more rewarding long-term than pressing a button to firm up the dampers. Or massively inconvenient.

Anything else?

Actually, loads. Lots of other Emira updates have arrived all at once, so now’s a good time to round up where it’s improved, and where it hasn’t…

So, the gearbox. Fantastic new paddles. The new carbon blades now have a positive click to them. Like the pneumatic shifters on an Ariel Atom, or the well-sprung paddles in a GT3 RS. They’re addictive.

Less pleasing is the gearbox they’re talking to. The 8spd DCT just doesn’t deliver the downchanges when you command it. Lotus says the shift strategy has been optimised. It says that it doesn’t ‘fake’ the shift by showing the gear engaging on the driver display before it’s actually occurred. It says the only reason the transmission would deny a shift is because it would hit the redline.

I’m sure all that’s true on paper, but when you drive the 420 hard down a road you know like the back of your hand in real life, the entry to corners is interrupted by gearshifts that are simply too late arriving. Spoils your rhythm. And you can’t have a manual with this engine.

Also, beware the Volvo-ish gear selector lever, which you tug twice to engage Drive, or push away twice for reverse. Not especially intuitive, and liable to leave you in Neutral midway through a three-point turn.

I’m still not a fan of the Emira’s square, thick steering wheel. It muddies the feedback, and a Lotus should major on world-class steering. But owners wanted a car that was easier to get into, hence the flattened bottom, and Lotus needed a shape that didn’t block the display behind. So a simple round wheel isn’t on the options list (yet).

What about the removable roof?

Ah, you spotted that. Weird one. Also inspired by an option on the Esprit, the £5,000 lift-out glass roof is Lotus’ answer to the Emira faithful who fancy a convertible. They’re not going to get one, but this allows the wind into your hair without having to expensively redesign the body.

On the plus side it looks identical to a fixed-roof car and is simple to deploy – twist the handles, jump out, and lift the roof panel free.

What you do with it next is less clever. Instead of stowing the roof in the nose, you’re supposed to bag it up and slot it behind the seats, strapping it down with a safety harness. This is a cumbersome process which gets fingerprints all over the glass. And if it starts to rain, you’ll need to be extremely dextrous to extricate the roof and clamp it back on top before getting drenched.

A spring-loaded pop-out wind deflector keeps the cabin refined even up to 70mph and beyond, but in situ the roof panel buzzed in our early-build test car (a fault with this particular example, says Lotus) and the black glossy handles could do with a rubberised finish – they get incredibly hot when it’s the sort of weather that’d tempt you to perform a roof-ectomy.

If I don’t want any of the optional extras, what’s the cost?

The fastest Emira is also the most expensive, as you’d expect. 420 Sport prices start at £105,900. Base 911 Carrera money. That’s £9,500 more than the V6 SE, and £16,400 more than the Turbo SE.

Hefty jumps, those. And if you get busy with the carbon, paint and packs, it gets scary. Our test car added up to a mighty £140,000. Which is a lot for a 4cyl sports car with a laggy gearbox, even when it’s gorgeous to look at, quicker, and has the entire market to itself.