A Lotus SUV Is Coming To Give The Porsche Macan A Kicking
Lotus is planning an SUV to fight the Maserati Levante and Porsche Macan, and these designs have just been filed with patent authorities.
Billed from the off as the best-handling sports-SUV of the three, which would be some achievement, Lotus says it wants the car to go around bends “like nothing else in its segment.”
But just when you were thinking this might be a Lotus that’s actually all-new for once, we have to put a pin in that bubble. Geely-owned Lotus will take most of the new car’s key parts from stablemate Volvo.
Lotus CEO Jean-Marc Gales – who’s now back behind the wheel – confirmed that the Lotess-you-vee will be built from parts nicked from beneath the XC60 and XC90, which share the same modular structure.
Reading between the lines that means four cylinders only for the premium soft-roader, but at least the ‘twin-engine’ T8 plug-in hybrid drivetrain coughs up 401bhp. You can expect that to increase once Lotus’ engineers have whipped their tuning tools out.
The designs filed for patent applications look kinda Jaguar-ish from the front and surprisingly Ferrari-like from the back, although the bum-end styling clearly comes from the likes of the Exige and Evora.
Production is currently set to start in late 2021. Production of the £60,000-£70,000 car will be split across two locations with one said to be China and the other dependant on the outcome of Brexit negotiations.
Source: Autocar
Comments
It’s a mini Urus!!!!
At least this is a change from the all the “new” cars they’ve been releasing like every week lol
So much for “simplify, then add lightness”.
Colin Chapman is turning in his grave…
IN FLAMES
You can stll do that to SUV
Simplify, then add ride height?
If they didn’t start to branch out they would be gone within 20 years.
I hope, it becomes a good SUV.
This should be a game changer for Lotus! Maybe now they’ll actually have money to make actual new cars, not just copy pasting their existing cars…
Preach my duxe
guys its time to accept the fact that suvs are our supreme rulers
all hail the suv’s
Nooooo!
Lotus,no. Stick to one-off lightweight track cars,please
edit: On second thoughts go on,keep it up
Exactly!
Let people buy the SUV so they can build more racecars
And go bankrupt? These cars don’t sell
I hope that this is some early April fools joke.
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