Lotus Elise, Exige and Evora production ENDS to make way for the new Lotus Emira

Production of the Lotus Elise, Exige and Evora ends at Hetherl as the old range of Lotus cars makes way for production of the new Lotus Emira.

We know things are changing rapidly at Lotus as Geely money sees a new wave of Lotus models – including the electric Evija Hypercar and a Lotus SUV – set to take Lotus on its next big adventure.

But ahead of the sea-change to EVs, Lotus has one final ‘real’ Lotus to build – the new Lotus Emira – and that means saying goodbye to the Elise, Exige and Evora, with the final models rolling off the line at Hethel yesterday (22 December) ahead of production of the new Emira starting properly in the spring.

Over the course of 26 years, Lotus has built 51,738 of the trio of outgoing cars – almost half of Lotus total production – and the last of each line (pictured above) will be retained for Lotus’s Heritage Collection, which are an Elise sport 240 final Edition, Exige Cup 430 Final Edition and Evora GT430 Sport.

But the total number of cars built on the ‘Small Car Platform’ doesn’t just include the Elise, Exige and Evora, but the Vauxhall VX220 and Tesla Roadster – and the Lotus 340R, Europa 2-Eleven and 3-Eleven – taking the total cars built to 56,618.

Matt Windle, Lotus MD, said:

As we say farewell to the last few cars, we look forward to the Emira and Evija in the all-new factories at Hethel and sub-assembly facilities in Norwich, which introduce greater efficiencies and automation, higher quality and flexibility and the hugely exciting next chapter in our Vision80 strategy.

Lotus will now dismantle the current assembly lines – in place since 2000 – and replace them with a state of the art Emira Factory able to produce 5,000 Emiras a year on a single shift basis.