2000 Lotus Elise S1 111s Millenium Edition/track Use Only! on 2040-cars

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Lotus Eletre configurator welcomes virtual tire kickers

The Lotus Eletre configurator is ready to be toyed with. There aren't that many customization options to play with, but the total experience is quite fun. The exterior palette consists of seven colors. The odd bit is that, try what browser we may, we couldn't get the names of those seven colors to appear anywhere. The menu looks like black, green, red, yellow, and three shades of silver, but clicking the latter three reveals what looks like a metallic silver, a flat gray, and a rose-tinted-something. Same with the interior, which comes in green, black, white, or beige. All but black result in a two-tone cabin. Things are much easier when it comes to wheels. The floral petal rims either come in all black or black with polished accents, the center caps are either Lotus yellow or black, and the calipers are either yellow, red, green, black, or charcoal.  For those of you unsure about the Eletre's looks, the well stocked Animations, Beautyshots, and Environments sections could get you on board with the styling — it did for us; a red Eletre under a cosmopolitan setting spoke to us in a way the yellow debut model did not. A couple of notes, though. Choose your colors in one of the Environments; the ambient lighting in the Beautyshots changes the vehicle lighting like in real life, turning the bright yellow calipers into a dusty gray in one instance, for example. The animations that show off features like the aero shutters in the grille and the active rear spoiler need a couple of clicks to perform. And again, just like in real life, the Eletre only does what you tell it; if you leave the hatch up in the Boot animation then click the Spoiler or Front Left Door, the boot stays up. Click to a city environment with the driver's door and hatch open and you'll be crystal clear as to what the Eletre looks at the end of a shopping run, a feature we've never seen in a configurator before. You have your mission and your cautions, now go play. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. 2017 Lotus Evora 400 Review | Autoblog

The UK votes for Brexit and it will impact automakers

It's the first morning after the United Kingdom voted for what's become known as Brexit – that is, to leave the European Union and its tariff-free internal market. Now begins a two-year process in which the UK will have to negotiate with the rest of the EU trading bloc, which is its largest export market, about many things. One of them may be tariffs, and that could severely impact any automaker that builds cars in the UK. This doesn't just mean companies that you think of as British, like Mini and Jaguar. Both of those automakers are owned by foreign companies, incidentally. Mini and Rolls-Royce are owned by BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover by Tata Motors of India, and Bentley by the VW Group. Many other automakers produce cars in the UK for sale within that country and also export to the EU. Tariffs could damage the profits of each of these companies, and perhaps cause them to shift manufacturing out of the UK, significantly damaging the country's resurgent manufacturing industry. Autonews Europe dug up some interesting numbers on that last point. Nissan, the country's second-largest auto producer, builds 475k or so cars in the UK but the vast majority are sent abroad. Toyota built 190k cars last year in Britain, of which 75 percent went to the EU and just 10 percent were sold in the country. Investors are skittish at the news. The value of the pound sterling has plummeted by 8 percent as of this writing, at one point yesterday reaching levels not seen since 1985. Shares at Tata Motors, which counts Jaguar and Land Rover as bright jewels in its portfolio, were off by nearly 12 percent according to Autonews Europe. So what happens next? No one's terribly sure, although the feeling seems to be that the jilted EU will impost tariffs of up to 10 percent on UK exports. It's likely that the UK will reciprocate, and thus it'll be more expensive to buy a European-made car in the UK. Both situations will likely negatively affect the country, as both production of new cars and sales to UK consumers will both fall. Evercore Automotive Research figures the combined damage will be roughly $9b in lost profits to automakers, and an as-of-yet unquantified impact on auto production jobs. Perhaps the EU's leaders in Brussels will be in a better mood in two years, and the process won't devolve into a trade war. In the immediate wake of the Brexit vote, though, the mood is grim, the EU leadership is angry, and investors are spooked.

How Lotus plans to expand and electrify as it enters a new age

If you’ve never driven a car made by Lotus, youÂ’re not alone — theyÂ’ve always been a small manufacturer, and even spotting one in public is a rarity — but youÂ’re missing out. Their exotic good looks are far surpassed by their dedication to connecting man to machine to pavement above all else. But like every other automaker these days, big changes are afoot. Yes, Lotus is going electric. But itÂ’s also going big, and in more ways than one. We recently sat down with Lotus Group VP & Managing Director Matt Windle and Chief Brand Officer James Andrew to talk about how the storied brand will pay service to its past as it aims its headlights toward the future. WeÂ’ve already seen the Lotus Evija (formerly referred to by internal codename Type 130), a low-volume, all-electric hypercar that represents the small automakerÂ’s first big step into electrification. With 1,500 kilowatts (about 2,000 horsepower) coming from four electric motors, you can forget 0-60; itÂ’ll do 0-186 miles per hour in 9.1 seconds. It starts at over $2 million, and production will be capped at 130 units. Flashy numbers to make a big splash, before going bigger in both size and production volume. Next will come the Lotus Eletre (formerly Type 132), an electric SUV that represents the (currently) small automakerÂ’s desire to cater to every lifestyle rather than to be pigeonholed by purists and luddites. To reach big volumes, Lotus needs to be a truly global company, and it needs to create cars that more customers can use, and at prices they can afford. Lotus Eletre Electric SUV View 25 Photos And even though an SUV isnÂ’t what weÂ’re used to seeing from Lotus, perhaps we shouldnÂ’t be surprised — and not just because seemingly every other exclusive, top-shelf brand is now offering an SUV or will be soon. James Andrew reminded us that the appreciation has always been there, and that Lotus founder Colin Chapman had two parking spots at the office: one for his Lotus Esprit, and the other for a Range Rover heÂ’d often drive to work. DonÂ’t expect a rock-crawling luxury off-roader to wear the Lotus badge, though. The gents assured us that the brandÂ’s focus remains on performance. And a crucial part of that performance is in driving dynamics that connect the driver to the car.