No matter what you’re doing right now, if you’re a car enthusiast you must stop it and get excited for the new Lotus Evora GT430, and at the same time the most powerful road-going sports car ever.
Obviously there are no rear seats in this one, but ‘hand-crafted’ carbonfibre body panels help lower the centre of gravity and cut weight to 1258kg dry – 26kg less than the Evora Sport 410 despite 9kg of extra components. It laps the Lotus test track in 1m25.8s, which is an Evora record. It’s actually as fast as the track-day 3-Eleven special on the same circuit, says Lotus. Power still comes from the supercharged and charge-cooled 3.5-litre V6, but power is up to 430bhp at 7000rpm and torque nudges up to 325lb ft at 4500rpm. There’s a Torsen limited-slip differential and an interesting air-to-liquid gearbox cooler hidden away, and a lightweight titanium exhaust that isn’t.
Just 60 are being made for markets across the globe, giving it guaranteed collector’s car status and underlining Lotus’ latest business model built on maximising profit margins via evolutions and special editions. The GT430 will launch to the 62mph standard in 3.8 seconds, while top speed is an eye-opening 190mph. Zero to 100mph should take less than eight seconds.
The price for all this advanced but old-school engineering? To be one of the 60 lucky customers who’ll own one, the charge is £112,500. Then there’s the options list, which stretches from the £3500 Sparco seat upgrade (pictured) to either black or red ultra-lightweight alloy wheels at £900 for the set. There’s a titanium harness frame with four-point harnesses for £4000, air-con for £1500, a stereo unit for £2000 and metallic paint for £1200, among other eye-wateringly expensive options.
