THE THEORYOF EVOLUTION

Ridged bladder seats, an inflating steering wheel and an AI track day coach... has Lotus hit on the supercar’s future, or gone mad’?

- TOM FORD

What you’re looking at is definitively not a new Lotus road car. It’s a pure concept called the Theory 1, a car that seeks to distill traditional Lotus values into a vehicle that’s also woven marrow deep with technology, a bit of creative free space for designers to figure out what Lotus actually stands for. A difficult question to answer when the technology is apparently sprinting in the opposite direction to what many would consider established Lotus values. Timely stuff, too, given that Lotus’ past two launches have consisted of two flavours of the same car in the Eletre large SUV and Emeya tall saloon, and good as they are, they’re big, heavy, tech-tilted luxury electric cars built in China, released in China before Europe and based on Chinese platforms. Precious little Lotusness to grab hold of.

But weirdly, quite a lot of people seem sanguine about the need for a car business to actually sell cars, and accepting of the fact that the UK and European market isn’t necessarily the biggest player in the game. But the next car from the company will be a smaller electric SUV – think Porsche Macan sized – so Lotus needs to reaffirm some core values before an entire generation thinks it only makes one thing.

Hence the Theory 1. A bit of a reminder that Lotus is still conscious. Although, when you read the press material on the car, you can’t help but feel that everything seems wound through with what can only be described as marketing overkill.