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TRES PINOS, CA – Some three hours into a loop through the twisty rural roadways of California wine country in the new-for-’11 Lotus Evora S, the thought occurs to us: “Hey, our fillings are still intact.”
Only a car from Lotus, the British maker of stripped down 2-seaters with suspensions sprung tighter than Tom Jones’ trousers, could illicit such an observation.
In fact, the ride in the Evora S may even be characterized as, dare we say, “supple,” compared with its jaw-jarring stablemate, the Elise.
That’s quite an achievement, given how just 12 hours earlier the same Evora S snaked through the infamous corkscrew of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca like an amusement park ride.
If ever there were a race-ready sports car a person could live with every day, this is it.
The Evora S starts at $76,000 and achieves up to 26 mpg (9.0 L/100 km) on the highway, but still sprints from 0-60 mph (97 km/h) in 4.3 seconds and tops out at 172 mph (277 km/h).
It could be said the Evora S finishes what the more economical and more sedate Evora started.
After bowing at the London motor show in mid-2008, deliveries of the base Evora to European customers from its Hethel assembly plant in Norfolk, U.K., got under way one year later.
