These were taken by multiple Lotus owner Phil Stevens this morning (Saturday) while on a personal tour of the factory with Matt Windle.
Inevitably these are getting loads of down/uploads and reposts all over social media, including some subtle and not so subtle image processing. Plus lots and lots of questions and speculation. I've asked Phil if he can upload the originals direct to here, so we have them without Facebook's compression.
You can see Phil's original post (and all the reactions and questions) here:
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It's pretty daft for Lotus to let photos leak out like this (I say leak, but they're with Matt's agreement) when everyone has been crying out for months for decent pictures. A few phone shots are interesting but there still has to be some caution about over-analysing them. These have been taken indoors under artificial light in an assembly hall that's only got the weekend lighting turned on, not the full working lights.
They're a decent representation of the colours if you take all that into consideration. The Hethel Yellow does look like that indoors in artificial lighting - wait till you see it in sunlight!
Why don't they get pictures of each colour taken professionally - it would be so much better!