Has Lotus built a Porsche-killer?

We have, it should be said, been here before. A brave new Lotus for a Brave New World. A car that really does promise it all. Performance, handling and lightweight, of course, but also those less historically Lotus-centric values of quality, practicality and durability.

Last time was a dozen years back. I remember bowling up to Hethel if not confident that Lotus had really produced a car capable of being compared to a Porsche, then at least hopeful that it might and quite prepared to believe that it could.

It could not. That anyone at Lotus thought the Evora in original form might inflict so much as a flesh wound on the Stuttgart machine seemed fanciful then and something closer to laughable now. It looked good from certain angles and added up on paper as Lotus (yes, that’s the official plural) always do, but in reality? I goggled at the size of the margin by which it missed the mark.