Ever since Lotus launched the Evora in 2009 with a Toyota V6, vestigial back seats, a £49,500 price tag and stout ambition, there’s been one giant Teutonic elephant in the room: the Porsche 911. But Lotus always managed a little distance: an Evora at sub-50k was still £17k cheaper than the £67k of the base-spec 911 Carrera 2 – if you managed to stay off the options buffet. It also positioned itself into a lower-performing niche: 276bhp versus the 345bhp of the lowliest 911. The Evora S changes all that.
This feature was originally published in the March issue of Top Gear magazine
The addition of a supercharger bumps the Lotus's power output to exactly 345bhp and the very basic price to £58,800 for the 2+0 variant. Add some much-needed options to the 2+2 - the Porsche comes with two rear buckets as standard - and that's smack bang into the Stuttgart court. Lotus will find excuses harder to fudge this high up the food chain. This far up, the competition has teeth.
Let’s start with some figures: the boggo versions of a Lotus Evora S 2+2 and a Porsche 911 Carrera 2 weigh in at £60,300 and £67,270 respectively. The cars we have here cost £73,459 for the Porsche and £70,360 for the Evora S. Pause, breathe, realise that's over 70-grand’s worth of Norfolk’s finest. The white Porsche in the pictures has a relatively modest hazing of options (sports exhaust, optional wheels, HDD nav and various Bluetooth and iPod media).
The Evora is more highly specced - it has 4,500-quid's worth of Tech and Premium Pack additions (which basically amount to leather and stereo upgrades and other addenda), as well as £3,400 of paint and wheels (19s on the front and 20s on the back). Both, it would be wise to point out, are the carriers of some fairly unforgivable options: a rear wiper for the 911 costs £235, and the Evora requires you to stump up £340 for body-coloured door handles, both require you to buy floor mats, but the point stands: the Evora is now placing itself directly in harm's way.
The performance figures also bear out the Lotus's near-parity with the 911. Equipped with a Harrop supercharger bolted to its mid-mounted 3.5-litre V6, the Evora S pumps out exactly the same 345bhp, weighs 1,437kg (very slightly more than the Porsche, surprisingly), manages 0-62mph in 4.8 seconds and a 172mph top speed. The Porsche, for reference, has an identical 345bhp from a 3.6-litre naturally aspirated flat six stuffed in its rear, weighs 1,415kg and sprints to 62mph in 4.9 seconds. Top speed for the 911 is an entirely respectable 180mph. So the two are almost perfectly matched. On paper.
After that, any similarities pretty much end. The Porsche is a lesson in long-term development: the slope-backed shape calmingly familiar, the wingless, slim-arched and uncluttered Carrera 2 the purest and prettiest of all the 911 variants. The optional 19-inch black-painted wheels and white paintwork are just enough to make this Porsche stand out without contaminating the overall effect. It is, while being fully aware ofthe weight of the word, iconic.
The effect is carried over into the interior. The Porsche is relatively spartan, a few too many buttons on the centre console to stymie any true aspirations of minimalism, but the general ambience is one of stylistic control. Comfortable, neat seats, buttonless wheel, pedals, gearstick and you, all positioned just so. The doors open wide, vision is fantastic - better than any of the current crop of coupe-hatches - and there's a very basic rightness to the Porsche that makes it very easy to settle into, even if there's a nagging feeling that the 911 is just a bit po-faced for its own good.
The Evora S, on the other hand, is much more explicit. There's no other way to describe it than the bare fact that the Lotus simply looks faster. Slung low, it sledges along looking eminently mid-engined, a hook of integrated rear spoiler floating above a fat central-exit exhaust and venturi-esque rear bumper treatment. There are vents and grilles and huge-looking and utterly lovely anthracite-accented rims. You walk up to the 911 with a sigh of contentment, but the fizz of adrenaline really only comes when you're approaching the Evora. In a more restrained colour, the Evora S would look very intense and very tempting indeed.
Inside, the Lotus is more of the same. A wide sill and relatively low door mean that you still have to slide your bum into the Evora and follow it with your legs, rather than just sitting down like you do in the Porsche, but once inside there's a surprising amount of room. A semi-floating metal centre console contains rotary heater controls, above that a flashy and bought-in-looking Alpine multi-media head-unit.
Directly in front is a set of cowled dials (speed and revs) with some racy-looking graphics, framed by two side panels of flush-fit alloy buttons for things like lights, traction control and Sport functions. You sit low, but perfectly comfortably next to a relatively tall gearstick, and it's very easy to get settled once you're in, though probably worth mentioning that rear vision is limited. Rear parking sensors come as part of the Tech Pack, and be aware that it would be wise to option them: reversing the Evora S, you view the world through what appears to be the eyeslit in a medieval suit of armour.
The real reason we're here, though, is to figure out which one you would spend cold, hard cash on, so we need to assess which one floats boats when it comes to driving. Well, if you dig into the tedious numbers, the Porsche's slight weight advantage of 17kg over the Lotus is part-negated by the Evora's extra 8lb ft of torque, so in a drag race the two cars are all but identical. There is literally a fag paper between them up to track-spec speeds, at which point the Porsche seems to just slip through the air a little more easily. Though to be honest, you'll never find that out on a public road. But put these two cars side by side on a twisty bit of tarmac, and you'll be stunned by how different two sports cars can be. They really are that far apart.
The Porsche is stiff - no other word for it. Sure, it'll soak up a consistent, large-amplitude hump like nobody's business, but stick it on the average British B-road and you better be hanging on and practising your yodelling. The gearbox is slightly rubbery in places but utterly accurate, and the steering is absolutely spot-on: simply aim down the turrets of the headlights, and the 911 will put you there.
The flat six sounds like a bag of spanners at idle, a wonderful yowl at full chat, and the way it sears though its range is genuinely exciting. Forget any particular party tricks, the 3.6 in the basic 911 has candid and instant response and runs through the rev-range like it really enjoys it. It actually feels like it has more torque than it does, and although the brakes are perfectly adequate when warm, they could do with more bite and aggression. It is a performance that reminds you why the 911 has become a bit of a cliché. Because it's so bloody good.
The Evora S, on the other hand, is a revelation, even with fairly modest suspension tweaks over the standard car. From the moment you grasp the steering wheel, from the first manhole cover or raised drain, you know this is somethingspecial. Telepathic steering, insanely absorbent suspension. You can feel the slight gyroscopic effect of the larger rims and the texture and grain of the road surface - I swear I'm not making that up - but from a car that rides like a peculiarly committed S-Class. Alright, so maybe not quite limo-levels of unperturbability, but the harder you push the Evora, the more it provides fairly startling answers.
You can pile into corners, hit mid-corner bumps that have the 911 scrabbling and bouncing, and the Evora slices through, unruffled. The engine is thorough but a little soulless, barking through the gears but never really revelling, even with the Sport button depressed, throttle response set to maximum and the exhaust's throat cleared. And the gearbox, despite being the Sport option, still refuses to be hurried from fifth to fourth and third to second. But the Recaro seats are incredibly comfortable, and that fact, coupled with the steering and suspension, makes the Evora S one of the fastest cars I have driven across country in the past 18 months. Just enough to be scary, not scary enough to be overly cautious.
So the Evora has the best suspension and handling kinematics by far, superlative steering and a strong, motivated engine. The Porsche is the most practical, the least fussy and has a truly lovely engine and interior. You could argue the case for either, for a very long time. Except for one thing: the Evora isn't put together like a £70k-plus car. Or even a £60k-plus car.
The truth of the matter is this: you can forgive having to slide the driver's seat back and forth to get in and out. You can forgive a bit of bum-shuffling and lack of rearward vision. You can forgive slippery rotary controls. What you can't forgive at this price are windscreen wipers that interfere with the stereo, dodgy ergonomics from the control stalks, loose carpet under the accelerator, a creatively wandering idle and bare screw heads. That stuff just creates paranoia. We should be discussing here whether you want a 911 with Evora suspension, or an Evora with Porsche build quality. But we can't, and so the choice remains simple: there is no choice. You would advise people to try the Lotus to feel what proper suspension set-up feels like, and then you'd insist they buy the 911 to save them from screaming insanity. Game over.
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