The Aston Martin Rapide mimicking Lotus Eterne
Lotus has gone slightly berserk with new model announcements today. This is for a new Rapide-challenging range-topper – the Lotus Eterne.
You’ll have to stick with this if you’re going through these in chronological order. There was no way we could seriously do one story on all of the Lotus announcements today, so you’re getting one for each. Sort of.
This one’s the Lotus Eterne (yes, they have to begin with ‘E’) and is the Lotus take on the Aston Martin Rapide (there couldn’t be a theme here, could there?) and is going to be built on a stretched version of the new Lotus Elite platform.
In case you’ve forgotten already what Lotus are proposing for the new Elite, that will be a supercharged (based on the new Esprit news) version of the 5.0 litre V8 in the Lexus IS-F which get’s mated through a hybrid ‘box to a pair of electric motors.
As with the Elite and Esprit we’re assuming some sort of KERS, but there are no real clear indications of how the KERS will be used. Push a button to overtake? Use the power to start or accelerate? We’ll find out eventually. Possibly.
To be honest, although we’re certain Lotus are entirely serious about their plans to out-Aston Aston Martin, we’re finding it very difficult to see how on earth they’re going to go from building hugely fun track-day cars – with sometimes less than perfect build quality – to competing on the world stage with stalwarts of the genre like Aston Martin and Bentley. Never mind a resurgent Jaguar.
But it’s going to be interesting to see. With the Eterne we’re not sure when that will be, but…
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