A Brand New 2014 Lotus Evora Was Just Sold In The USA

It took this Connecticut dealer seven years to find this Evora's first owner, and it's far from the only new-old Lotus out there

Matt Robinson

09 Feb 2021

Sometimes brand new dealer stock takes a while to shift. That’s why, for instance, Alfa Romeo sold five 4C coupes in 2020, despite the car going out of production the year before.

Occasionally, though, cars sit on the forecourt for a whole lot longer. A few weeks back we heard that someone in the USA had bought a brand new CR-Z some four years after Honda stopped making the thing, but that pales in comparison to this latest car sales oddity from the country. The car above is 2014 Lotus Evora, which Secor Lotus in Connecticut has at last found a new owner for, Car & Driver reports.

A buyer from Long Island, New York, already the owner of an Elise, bought the car with a $20,000 discount off list. That doesn’t seem like such a bad deal. It’s the 345bhp supercharged ‘S’ version, and although Lotus has been endlessly tweaking the car over its long production life, the Evora remains fundamentally the same beast. Some elements, like the cabin, have barely changed at all.

Plus, the Steve Plona of Secor Lotus seems to have done his utmost to keep the Evora in tip-top condition. The boots are original, he told Car and Driver, but they’ve been kept over-inflated - a trick used to avoid wear when storing tyres. The Evora has been plugged into a trickle charger to keep the battery in good health, and although it’s sat in climate-controlled storage for most of its life after reaching the US, the car was occasionally taken out and run.

The Evora had already been kicking around a few years when this one was built in December 2013 at Lotus’ Hethel factory, and it was only recently that the company announced production will finally cease in 2021. This year also spells the end for the Exige and Elise.

It’ll no doubt be possible to buy new stocked examples of these for some time after, of course. Secor also has a 2018 Evora 400 in its inventory, while over at Lotus of Western New York, there’s a brand new 2015 Exige LF1 waiting for its first owner.

Neither that Exige nor Secor’s 2014 Evora can claim the title of the USA’s oldest brand new, though. Incredibly, there’s still thought to be an unregistered Lexus LFA out there somewhere.