Will the Lotus Evora GTE Come to the U.S.? Maybe, But There Are a Few Hurdles

After seeing the bare-carbon-fiber, special-edition Lotus F1 Team Evora GTE in person at the Geneva auto show, we wanted to know whether that car or the less-special but still-limited-edition GTE on which it's based could come to the U.S. So we asked Lotus. After Lotus unveiled the Evora GTE Road Car concept at last year's Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, the company decided to produce 25 units with the intention of selling them in China. After Chinese customers ordered nearly five times that amount, the company began reevaluating the car's prospects for other countries, including Europe and North America. Cool, right? Well, yes, but it turns out that there are a few hurdles to overcome before the car could be sold here. We're told work has begun to certify the GTE for sale in Europe; if its efforts are successful, it's at this point that Lotus could begin the process to bring the car to North America. The biggest roadblock to our market involves the Evora's 444-hp, supercharged V-6 engine, which would need to be certified with the EPA. (Because no chassis hard points differ from the Evora and Evora S sold here—the seats are similar, too—Lotus doesn't expect it will need to crash-test the GTEs as part of its certification efforts.) But getting the engine to pass federal emissions requirements while also delivering the expected output would be a challenge, we're told, and the cost to do so becomes critical considering that the sales volume would be extremely small. The numbers aren't final, but only 100 or so cars would be slated for Europe and perhaps 30 at the most would be available in the U.S.; Lotus indicates that those totals would include both regular and F1 GTEs, although no breakdown was given. As you'd expect, the Evora GTE wouldn't be cheap, coming in somewhere between $160,000 and $200,000 here in the U.S. The company indicates that these highly theoretical prices could change depending on the actual certification costs and how much carbon fiber ultimately is utilized in a North American version of the GTE. (The existing cars use quite a bit of the expensive, lightweight material.) So while a final decision on whether to bring the awesome GTE to the U.S. has not been made, Lotus is at least working on getting the car to someone outside of China. from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com

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