Emira doesn't need to beat Cayman in performance metrics. Just needs to be on par or even sub-par in some but within striking distance. Emira's ace in the hole isn't magazine racing but emotional appeal. This is where the argument gets subjective and muddied.
People buy sports cars on emotional appeal, a smaller niche buy for track utility. Granted part of that emotional appeal is based on performance but not always 100%. More like a form/function split ratio which varies per person. I imagine Porsche buyers care >50% for function, Emira buyers care >50% for form (except Porsche diehards who think the looks of Cayman > Emira). My guess on what mainstream buyers care more about? Form aka vanity which includes rarity where Emira also wins. So long as it also performs with competence. Then there's the subset of geeks (us) who care about driver engagement. Emira [I hope] should satisfy us but we, once Lotus's main target customer, are now a small subset of the larger superset of casual sports car buyers who don't care for driving feel. Brand awareness and prestige will weigh in Porsche's favor to ultimately win overall. That's where Lotus can't out-Porsche a Porsche. But the real victory is how much market share Emira steals away. It doesn't need a majority. A mental tug of war between form vs function will be fought internally by customers in showroom floors around the world.
Emira objectively and subjectively seems ready for showtime. The main showstopper holding back its full potential? Marketing. By extension, that includes a limited dealer network which hurts brand awareness. Won't even blip on the average Joe/ordinary Jane's radars if they've never heard of it. Lotus needs to pull an Esprit or Elise on this one (both eras predate my generation). How? Appearances in culturally relevant movies like James Bond or Pretty Woman. (In both, form mattered over function.) Being in the next arc of MCU films might do. Like that R8 showstopper moment in Iron Man but appealing to the current generation of sports car buyers. Or maybe the next hit reality show on streaming platforms with cast members who have millions of IG follows. Which leads to my next point...
A crucial area marketing should get savvy on: Web 2.0 marketing. Maybe the GT-R was born into it, then BRZ/FR-S/GR 86, Huracan, the Z, BMW has strong footing, and C8 is still knocking it out of the park (rap song "Adderall (Corvette Corvette)" unintentionally became a TikTok challenge because the C8 gained relevance among Gen Z and millennials). Then there are the endless YouTube content creators with their car builds, many with C8s. GM smartly embraced this by inviting a YouTuber (Emelia Hartford, C8 modding chick) to the filming of its Z06 announcement "documentary" (edited to mimic the drama of a documentary). If Lotus could embrace mod culture, form partnerships with aftermarket fabricators like GM has done (to the point of offering aftermarket parts as options on the C8's official Build & Price site), and be accessible to Web 2.0 "influencers," it would have a hit.
Anyway, I'm starting to merge game theory into marketing and should stop. I doubt Lotus has endless tranches of capital to devise GM or Porsche levels of marketing strategy. In which case success can't be manufactured but needs to be organic. It needs to go viral like how the Elise got carried. By "carried" I mean OP (overpowered in gaming) by a glitch, hack, or imbalance in the system that intrinsically grants a woefully unfair advantage. Elise was an abnormal genius of pure handling talent and lightness that didn't exist elsewhere. I think Esprit had that to some extent but its wedge styling nailed the industry with perfect timing. Can anyone think of similar scenarios playing out for Emira? I think its path to success would mimic something closer to the Esprit formula, sort of an Esprit 2.0.
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