The Lotus Evora GT is in its final year. Ben Hsu purchased this car to ensure he had one of the last analogue, driver-centric cars with a raw driving experience. The car is comparable in price to a base model Porsche 911 but it offers a much more visceral experience. It provides an extreme amount of driver feedback. Other than back up sensors and a sport mode, there aren't many driver-assistance technologies on this car. The Lotus Evora GT is for the true driving enthusiast.
Transcript:
Hi folks and welcome to Center Lane, I'm Bruce Hitchen. Today we're doing something a little bit different. Ben Hsu is taking delivery of a brand new car. Now Ben has been on the show before. A while back we did an episode on Ben's collection of Porsche 911s he's got a couple of GT3s plus a 930. He's also done a segment on his split window 63 Corvette. Now today is the day that he gets delivery of his brand new Lotus. Before we get into that, I want to remind you to click the 'like' button if you like this episode and subscribe to my channel. Now Ben has been waiting for this car for a number of months and today it gets unveiled. Let's take a look at the car and hear from Ben.
Lotus wasn't in the scope of cars for for me to buy on the want list. One February afternoon my friend and I went for lunch and he asked me what I was doing afterwards and said he wanted to go to the Lotus dealership and check out this Evora GT. I said Evora GT, what is that? He says well let's go check it out so I said sure. We came to the dealership and there was there was a car here. We talked to Stan and my friend asked him, if i was to buy a 911 or or a Lotus, tell me why I should buy the Lotus? He says well, here's the keys, go drive it.
They're very unique, they're still hand built today in Hethel, in the UK. They're making only few cars a year compared to other sports manufacturers such as Porsche and some others. If you want something more unique, something more raw, something more involving, you would go for Lotus.
He drove it for 10 minutes, he says yeah I'm sold and I pulled the car over and said you drive so I jumped in. I drove back to the dealership and I thought, wow! This is really good. Then I went home, did some research and all the car reviewers, journalists on YouTube, they rave about this car. I thought, wow you know, maybe he's on to something. So I came back and a few days later. Phoned Stan up, say: hey I'd like to take it for another drive. That'd be okay? Yeah sure, come on down.
First day he showed up, he didn't know much about Lotus and then I spoke to him the next day and a few days after and he knows so many things, all of a sudden, yeah.
I mean the car just drove so well and I never even knew. I've always been a Porsche guy. Corvette guy, Porsche guy. And now I'm a Lotus guy too.
One of the things that I believe these guys were interested in is that the cars is very unique, still hand built. It's one of the most successful race teams in the history of Formula 1 so their philosophy is always, not to have the most power but have a superb power to weight ratio. He used to say that well, if you are light you'll be faster everywhere, right.
This car is very analogue; the way it sounds, the way it, the power is delivered, hydraulic power steering, even the the steering wheel is made of titanium. They have to find the right kind of material to get the right kind of feel for this car. The shifter knob is weighted. It's in collaboration of all the best parts in the industry. Bilstein, AP racing brakes, Toyota engine, Sparko carbon seats, H&R springs. Like this car is just all the good parts put together. And Lotus's philosophy is, they build a car with very light weight. It doesn't require a lot of horsepower for it to be a performance car. And the way it drives, it really shows it.
Here in Vancouver it's pretty tough to stand out right because you have the McLarens here, you have the Ferraris, Porsches but you know what, not many people own Lotus and they notice. It's different and especially Ben's car in in the orange metallic paint.
First impressions...pretty impressive. Just from the short test drive that I had before I bought the car, I already knew it was a pretty good car but got 600 kilometers on it now. It really impressed me how Lotus with their suspension technology and the steering. How this car is put together. It's all about the driver and the way the car feels is so analogue . It's not something you can just run out and buy in the marketplace these days because like everything is controlled by different electronics and so on, so forth. But this car is very, still you know, it's all you
Yeah, just feel this thing. It's a fairly lightweight car and that's the way I feel it does, as it does, because you know it doesn't have to move a lot of weight so power to weight ratio is very good. Steering feels great, which suspension, same thing. You know, doesn't, there's not a lot of heft that's pushing everything around.
And it's so tight feeling. Very tight. Every aspect about this car feels...
Every input, every input.
Yeah and you can tell you know as you're driving it that it's all driver input isn't it? Yes.
Such a fun car you know like it's, everything you do, it responds. It's nothing that with electronics under the car is doing the work for you...because you make a mistake in this car, you will know because the car will let you know. And I haven't been this excited about a car for a long time. I wake up in the morning, I want to go drive it. And when I go drive it, I want to go drive it further and further because it's just such an amazing car. I learn something new about it every day. The way it handles, you know like, I'm still breaking it in so I haven't taken it to the track yet, and I get thumbs up all the time. People ask me, what is this thing? It's an exotic looking car but yet it's not a common place where you see like a Lamborghini or a Ferrari where you see, you go downtown, every two blocks you see one.
Ben's car is one of, called one of 11 that we will receive here in Western Canada so including British Columbia and Alberta. So quite special!
It's different. It's different than everything else that I own.
Just the way the whole car is put together, the way it feels when you're, when you're driving it. From from the moment that you open the door, the way the door closes, the fit and finish of the car everything is it it's so nice. I chose the colour because I wanted something vibrant like a Skittle. I believe exotics have to look very vibrant. Like, I'm very impressed, I'm very happy.