Lotus Elise, Exige and Evora to Bow Out in Favor Of All-New Sports Car Series

No worries, because we’re dealing here with a clear case of the positive edging out the negative. That’s because Lotus Cars has also confirmed a completely new series of sports cars, with the first member of the “Lotus Type 131” family scheduled to kick off prototype production in Hethel later this year.

According to the company, its planned manufacturing investment is a major part of the new “Vision80” business plan. It will also include the decision to close a couple of smaller assembly facilities, as their activity will be moved into just one “efficient” operation in the city of Norwich.

Additionally, in tune with the £100 million investment in Hethel, Lotus will seek to increase its current workforce. The company needs another 250 employees for the engineering and manufacturing departments of both Lotus Cars and its consultancy subsidiary, Lotus Engineering.

The latter is also on the verge of opening a Warwick-based Advanced Technology Center later this year, but we’re obviously more interested in the promised developments with the teased “forthcoming family of performance cars.”

So far, Lotus has shared just one lonely image hinting at the “new generation of products that will follow Elise, Exige, and Evora, which have entered their final year of production in 2021.” We performed a little bit of Photoshop magic on the dark teaser, but at the moment, there isn’t much info to be shared on the development of the all-new Type 131.

Although we’re clearly dealing with three performance cars, they’re completely hidden under the wraps – so we can only distinguish the fact that each has a distinctive styling for the signature daytime LED running lights. It’s possible, though one should take this with a grain of salt, that we’re also dealing with separate front designs. No worries, soon enough we’ll know more.