No regrets on reversing my position

[John 1963]

Glad I pulled my deposit placed at good wood at Xmas .The reviews mirror my thoughts the new skin look lovely but my evora is lighter therefore faster ,sounds better and will be rarer and I bought it with 2k miles at 74k .As expected the emira is a reskinned evora but hasn’t improved in the key driving areas ie gear change response steering etc . It’s a good marketing exercise by geely to sell the evora in a new skin and get circa 83k per unit and the first editions are not capped by numbers so potentially the first editions could number quite a few thousand .The step change will be the auto in 2023 and will be circa 15k cheaper ,good look to those still hanging on for delivery ,if your out my alpine has took over the lotus mantra ie light characterful driving always a joy ,on my second and each one has been trouble free ,retains good residuals and are rare I’m told only 400 sold in England so far and with production finishing in a year or so buy one of those save yourself 15k and forget the depreciation they will be sought out in 5 years time whereas I suspect the emira will be more common place and with the limited production runs of the 4 litre cayman if you wish to spend 80k will be a far safer place for your money -no regrets

 

[FederGigant]

Very interesting to read! Thanks for sharing.

 

[BeHappy]

You make some Interesting comments that are resonating. When I test drive the Emira I also want to test drive the Alpine as this is where my head keeps going cheap cheerful, depreciation won’t be off a cliff edge, quirky looks and uncommon on the road. Maybe the base Emira is a more sensible buy or used once all the fuss dies down. I don’t want to be feeling I’m forking out £80k for just a tarted up sexy shell .

 

[Porter]

You make some Interesting comments that are resonating. When I test drive the Emira I also want to test drive the Alpine as this is where my head keeps going cheap cheerful, depreciation won’t be off a cliff edge, quirky looks and uncommon on the road. Maybe the base Emira is a more sensible buy or used once all the fuss dies down. I don’t want to be feeling I’m forking out £80k for just a tarted up sexy shell .

If you wait to get a 4cyl, the base will probably be £80k by the time you get around to it. I fully expect prices to shift 15-20% in the next two model years.

 

[eriegz]

Enjoy your Evora!

 

[John 1963]

If you wait to get a 4cyl, the base will probably be £80k by the time you get around to it. I fully expect prices to shift 15-20% in the next two model years.

If you wait two years for the auto and find you don’t like it’s price the so called first edition emira will have depreciated from the 80 k now to 65 k as in all mass produced cars - geely hopes to sell upto 4000 emira cars by then ; eventually the auto will be the slower depreciating model by far !

 

[kitkat]

Enjoy your Evora, we’ll have to go on living with our decision

 

[dgrace]

Drive what you love. My guess is if an Emira, Evora and Alpine are parked side-by-side, only one of them will draw a crowd.

 

[Weyland]

My friend has an Evora S, it's a fantastic car but the Emira is not simply a re-skinned Evora!

I'm still slightly confused why everyone has been given pre-production vehicles to review - 1 thought is they will tweak production cars based on review feedback

 

[Leonard]

Looking at the Emira reviews today, I can only see Exige and Elise prices heading one way!
Time out on the older Evora but the 400/410/430 models should also do well I think over time.

 

[SlavaUkraini]

Too many people can’t get past the Emiras looks. It looks great. It looks better than a lot of other cars. It doesn’t seem to drive better or give better emotions. It won’t turn as many heads, and for some reason guys on here seem to be more interested in buying cars for other people on the road than for themselves. Buy an evora gt and save money or buy a Porsche GT4 and spend a little more. My GT4 comes this fall. Not trying to be a disappointment, but the reviews certainly were in my opinion.

 

[Eagle7]

My friend has an Evora S, it's a fantastic car but the Emira is not simply a re-skinned Evora!

I'm still slightly confused why everyone has been given pre-production vehicles to review - 1 thought is they will tweak production cars based on review feedback

Yeah this part has been a bit strange. Why give the same people previews of the ADAS prototype VP 007 car, just a few weeks before giving them these pre-production cars? Why not wait until final spec production cars are ready for the big media splash we've seen today?

The only thing that makes any sense is what you said; they're using these experiences to tweak cars for production. Though I don't understand why in-house personnel couldn't have discovered these same things without it going out into the press. Maybe they feel they're too close to it, and wanted feedback from people not involved with making the car. Who knows.

 

[TomE]

I think it's very unlikely they are using the press as beta testers to then tweak the production cars. Stuff like the gear shift was highlighted by Lotus as part of the press briefing on VP007, they knew it still needed finalising and yet these cars don't seem to have it fully sorted. Or it's like the Evora and just needs a firm positive action rather than rushing it. They've had numerous staff doing 1000s of validation and accumulation miles, so they should have been able to spot most things before the press did.

Lotus will have had to agree review timings well in advance with all the publications, coordinating across dozens of journalists, and had to pre-book them all to drive a fairly small batch of cars in a narrow time window. They probably hoped they'd have production cars ready in time for that window, but have clearly missed that. Not just missing parts caught up in transit from Asia but also non-final versions of dashboard software, still-not-finalised seats etc etc.

I imagine they were faced with a choice of cancelling all the press reviews and re-booking for +1 or +2 months, so not getting them out in time before dealer and first customer cars, or going ahead with not quite finished cars.

Aside from the concerns the reviews highlight on some facets of the car, what concerns me more is it suggests the cars still haven't been finalised and so customer cars won't start production in time for July deliveries. So now do they sort this stuff and delay, or get on and deliver cars without fixing some of this?

I think many of the July people will now be very insistent about test drives of a production car before committing to their order.

 

[Eagle7]

My thought is they didn't want to go to Goodwood this year without any road reviews, so they put them out there to have that done in time. It's a mixed bag for sure, but they've done it and it is what it is. We'll see what they show up with at Goodwood for driving reviews; whether they'll be final production cars or not.

 

[digilotus]

The bit that confuses me with the gear shift is that it is basically the same mechanism as used in the last Elise/Exige and Evora. Weren't too many complaints there...

Not sure what further work is needed to fix cross-gate shift feel? Probably go to the local hardware store and get a bigger can of grease and add a lithium washer? Or perhaps polish the burrs off any cast aluminium moving parts?

 

[TomE]

It sounds like they need to run the cars in more and change the gearbox oil. My Evora's shifting improved noticeably for an uprated oil. The gear linkages also need careful adjustment - which I'd hoped they'd have worked out how to do efficiently, effectively and repeatably for a build rate of 25 cars per day.

 

[r1lee]

Too many people can’t get past the Emiras looks. It looks great. It looks better than a lot of other cars. It doesn’t seem to drive better or give better emotions. It won’t turn as many heads, and for some reason guys on here seem to buy more interested in buying cars for other people on the road than for themselves. Buy an evora gt and save money or buy a Porsche GT4 and spend a little more. My GT4 comes this fall. Not trying to be a disappointment, but the reviews certainly were in my opinion.

I am unsure what you are saying. You state at the beginning that everyone can't get past the look of the car. Obviously, it's fricken gorgeous.

But then you say, we are planning to buy the Emira for other people other then ourselves?

Hello, we think it looks gorgeous, hence we are buying it for ourselves

 

[Cachaco131]

The bit that confuses me with the gear shift is that it is basically the same mechanism as used in the last Elise/Exige and Evora. Weren't too many complaints there...

Not sure what further work is needed to fix cross-gate shift feel? Probably go to the local hardware store and get a bigger can of grease and add a lithium washer? Or perhaps polish the burrs off any cast aluminium moving parts?

Elise and Exige were pre-YouTube era where everyone became an "expert" and says "notchy" to describe shift feel, "induction" noise (half of them don't really know what that is) , and other nomenclature. Now everyone complains because there is a platform...

 

[Eagle7]

Elise and Exige were pre-YouTube era where everyone became an "expert" and says "notchy" to describe shift feel, "induction" noise (half of them don't really know what that is) , and other nomenclature. Now everyone complains because there is a platform...

This is the problem with pretty much all journalism nowadays; there really is very little actual journalism. Everybody is in it for themselves, and watch to see what others say and do. If somebody says or does something they're impressed with, they immediately adopt that so they too can appear impressive and 'in the know'. They don't really care about the subject necessarily, or even the intended audience as much as they do about themselves, and their appearance. It's all about them and how they view themselves. They want clicks, likes and subscribers.

Harry is one of the best because he's a genuine enthusiast, and isn't in it for how he appears to others. He doesn't try to be witty or entertain. He approaches his reviews as though he's actually considering buying the car, and in some cases he actually is. Henry has much the same quality in his style, though with a bit of British entertainment reserve. Chris Harris is a genuine enthusiast, but he's also an entertainer and clearly enjoys entertaining. Each of those three have their place and style, but ultimately it's their profession. It's their job.

It's a business, for all of them. It's their job, and that should be kept in mind when reading or watching reviews.

 

[Cachaco131]

This is the problem with pretty much all journalism nowadays; there really is very little actual journalism. Everybody is in it for themselves, and watch to see what others say and do. If somebody says or does something they're impressed with, they immediately adopt that so they too can appear impressive and 'in the know'. They don't really care about the subject necessarily, or even the intended audience as much as they do about themselves, and their appearance. It's all about them and how they view themselves. They want clicks, likes and subscribers.

Harry is one of the best because he's a genuine enthusiast, and isn't in it for how he appears to others. He doesn't try to be witty or entertain. He approaches his reviews as though he's actually considering buying the car, and in some cases he actually is. Henry has much the same quality in his style, though with a bit of British entertainment reserve. Chris Harris is a genuine enthusiast, but he's also an entertainer and clearly enjoys entertaining. Each of those three have their place and style, but ultimately it's their profession. It's their job.

It's a business, for all of them. It's their job, and that should be kept in mind when reading or watching reviews.

I think it's also our fault, where now day to day drivers have given all the credit to the reviewers. It's as if we didn't have enough judgment to comment on our own experiences and therefore we take reviewers opinion as gospel.

My F80 ZCP had mixed reviews, and I think it's a blast and works well enough for me. I don't need a reviewer to tell me that I will spin because it struggles to put the power down...well obviously. Or that it's too heavy relative to an E30. Duh. When I read the modern reviews of my E46 M3 I laugh because everyone talks about it as the holy grail simply because others say so. I love it, and drive it a lot. But well, it's still a 20y old car and underpowered. But it's perfect for me.