Lotus plans U.S. return with Evora 400

LONDON -- Lotus unveiled the Evora 400, a revised version of its flagship Evora sports car that will spearhead the brand’s return to the U.S. market.

Lotus has moved the mid-engine coupe further upmarket to better compete with the likes of the Porsche 911 and Audi R8.

The Evora, the British automaker's only model sold in the U.S., was dropped for the 2015 model year because it no longer met federal crash standards.

The Evora 400 will come with side airbags to allow the car to be sold in U.S starting at the end of this year. "The U.S. will be our biggest market for the Evora,” CEO Jean-Marc Gales told Automotive News Europe.

The Evora 400 replaces the Evora and Evora S currently on sale in Europe. It will be unveiled at the Geneva auto show on March 3. European sales will start in August.

Lotus said the Evora 400 is the "fastest and most powerful production Lotus" to date. It has a top speed is 186 mph (300kph) and accelerates from 0-60 mph is 4.1 seconds (0-100kph in 4.2 seconds).

Lotus has increased the power of the Toyota-sourced 3.5-liter V6 engine to 400hp from 345 hp in the Evora S, whose top speed was 178 mph (286kph).

More than two thirds of the Evora 400 is new and the car is 22kg (48lbs) lighter than the current Evora, helped by a redesigned aluminum chassis.

Gales said the Evora's price will rise to about 72,000 pounds (about $111,000) in its home market of the UK, 9,000 pounds more than the current most powerful Evora. "That is still very much below an Audi R8 or Porsche 911 Carrera S," he said.

He said it was “no coincidence” that the Evora 400 had the same power output as the Carrera S, which costs 83,545 pounds in the UK.

Gales expects the Evora 400 to push total Lotus's annual sales to 3,000 next year from 2,000 forecast for the company’s current financial year that ends March 31.

Gales has recently plugged gaps in the range, most recently launching an automatic version of the Exige track-focused two-seater. He said he expected the automatic to account for 30 percent of Exige sales, buoyed by demand in Asia.

Lotus will develop an Evora 400 open top roadster version to go on sale worldwide next year, Gales said.

The Evora, which was launched in 2009, is currently the slowest-selling model out of Lotus’s three cars.

Lotus builds its cars on variants of a centrally located, lightweight bonded aluminum passenger cell, which Gales said "still had plenty of life left in it."

The company said production for all Lotus models, the Elise, Exige and Evora, will rise to 70 cars per week by September and it will recruit an additional 150 staff to accommodate the production increase.