Posts of the Week

Greetings Emira Forum! please excuse the narrative here, but its why I have not had a chance to pen my intro...hopefully some make it to the end

Craig Hartwell here, long time admirer of both the car, the brand and the forum, and after some pretty interesting spring time negotiations, my CFO (Mrs H) pulled forward the mid-life-crisis budget and allowed me to venture into the brave new world of Lotus ownership!!

Having over 50+ cars between myself and said CFO, we have had all sorts of shapes and sizes over the years. However some 8 years ago I closed a deal with major UK bank, to drive down the M6 and 'pop in' to the Tesla showroom to spend my commission! That was the start of my fascination with electric cars, and the amazing acceleration a Tesla S (100D) provided for me and my then little family! Having given up national track-daying on my motorbikes for fatherhood some 10 years prior, I never had the exhilaration of that 0-60 in a car that got anywhere close the bikes. But having my little gang ride along side me made the experience even more fun!

I was certainly an early adopter of what would become both the Tesla and electric car craze. But over the years, that flat out traffic lights parlour trick got boring. My eldest son developed the same car fascination and going to Silverstone college for his 16+ he simply told me that i was no longer cool, making zero noise and saving the occasional polar bear we'd never get to meet!!

All that happened as the Emira started its real delivery to the wild, and having kept an eye on the chaos/horror stories of delivery stories - I kept my powder dry! But a change of job circumstance, a diagnosis of early onset arthritis in my lower back and growing less and less relevant to my kids aspirational goals....we set about test driving and waking the demon within!!

Across the road from the Silverstone circuit/college, was the Lotus Silverstone, aka Woodcote and Copse who got my creaking body into a V6 first. Having gone down there in my Tesla 3 performance, I was not sure to expect given I was coming from a pretty fast straight line car. But wow, what a wonderful experience to be back in a car that growled, snorted, grunted and honestly screamed at me through the steering wheel!! The V6 tone, with supercharger coupled with a manual gearbox took me back decades, but it was just so much fun to feel the roads again around the outside of the Silverstone circuit!

Inspired, I raced home, spilled everything out to the Mrs like a kid coming home from first day at school!! She calmed me down, and said she'd be happy whatever I went for. But the forums/youtube/Harry's Garage world told me I needed to try the i4 before jumping in with both feet...

The guys at W&C were super friendly and really accommodating! They must deal with so many mid-life-crisis purchases, they knew how to help me out. So Albert (hopefully a positive name check wont hurt) sourced an i4 to test...and wow AGAIN! What a very different experience...fell in love with the turbo acceleration with paddle shift. The whole theatre of the car coming from Tesla was just amazing. The feedback was like being back in a pro-kart, and the slightly simpler drive lent itself far better to the CFO driving it as well! An ex-demonstrator was coming in, beautiful spec and colour...and the trigger was pulled! The waiting game began!

Cut to the chase - after a PPF, service, and private Tesla sale, our new dream car was finally ready for early June...which was tight given my son had a world championship powerlifting competition to compete in, in Rome on 14th June...and I vowed to drive him there myself IF, we could get everything sorted in time!! The guys at W&C pulled out all the stops, and we picked the car up on the Monday....drove to Rennes, on the Tuesday, Rennes to Milan on Wednesday via the Swiss alps, then final stage through the northern part of the Apennine mountain range down the West coast into Rome...3 days of pure driving bliss!!

A successful event (2nd in the WORLD for 18 year old drug free powerlifting!) saw us drive home, this time more central up through Italy via Florence and Bologna, then taking the French Alps & Monte Blanc route back, filtering through Rennes and home. Car performed flawlessly, FAR surpassing expectations (much to DBS, Ferrari Pista and Taycan Turbo's surprise!!) and ZERO traffic issues...until hitting the UK to find the M25 closed!! Trip of a lifetime, in a simply wonderful machine....

So coming up to 3 months ownership. Totally rejuvenated boy racer!! I'm back to being a cool dad (still not sure on the cool husband), I have a toy to drive for fun (that did mean a complete re-design of the garage to house it as well!) and I can say after pushing the car quite hard, it has soooo much more to give.

I have one thing to be resolved, a 'dunking' noise on the suspension over speed bumps? Due for suspension rubbers in a week or so...which should be in time for the upcoming Hethel track day on the 2rd Sep...that I'm hoping some on here are going along to!!

Keen to get out for some other meet ups before the crappy weather comes, but sharing a few memories and my Atlantic Blue i4, stock right now....but open to ideas for the future!!!

Signed - Happy & Proud Lotus owner!

Simply beautiful…

So in general, how dependable was the unit?

I wanted to share my thoughts on this platform, I see so many reviews. In July 2024, I sold my BMW G80 M3. I had driven it up to Montreal for F1 from Virginia (Born and raised in Montreal, moved to USA in 2020).



My m3 was manual, I bought it when it had 3k miles and did about 12 track days with it, it was straight pipe, minus the stock mufflers and had a Piggy back tune on it. That thing was the most boring M I've ever owned. Heavy, diluted, but fast and capable. Excellent Track car. Just to give you an idea, I had bought it when my wife got pregnant with our first child and I needed to replace my Cayman GT4,


I also owned a supercharged BMW M3 E92. I've had that car for a decade and track it as well. I still own the E92, love that platform and the sound of that V8, one of the most satisfying cars I've owned.



However, as you might imagine, my GT4, up to that point was my favorite car, before it I'd owned a Turbo S 2015 and a Ferrari FF (briefly). Honestly, the GT4 was the ultimate cup car, I enjoyed it on track days and drove it into the city when I needed to go to the office. It was a real weapon on the track. I must of done 20-30 track days before selling it, it was pretty much stock minus a short shifter and an exhaust. It did have it's drawbacks though, mine had the dreaded lifter tick and burnt oil like it was going out of style.


So long story short, I sell the GT4 and drive the E92/G80 for about 2 years. On my way to Montreal F1 in Juin of 25, on I95 near DC, I see a red lotus drive by, the thing sounded amazing and looked like some sort of baby supercar. Loved the look, and I felt like I was done with the M3 after 2 years and 25k miles of abuse. Got back home and started looking for a higher millage yellow Emira. Didn't want to pay sticker and obviously was looking at the manual V6 first editions. Read the reviews, they were about similar to the M3, very mixed, people complained it was too heavy, too muted from factory and fairly unrealiable.


Well, I live on a farm with a hole bunch of unreliable, heavy equipment, so why not add another one I thought.


Day 1 of ownership:



Yes, Headers, 3rd cat delete and Valve controller. I also contacted JUBU and Terry at JB4 for a tune. I'm the complete opposite as most of the folks on here probably, this isn't a garage queen and I live on a farm with no neighbors within 2 miles. I can show you guys (see link), we run go karts on an asphalt track on my property, it's very remote and noise is not a concern.




Alright, well, the car sounds absolutely fucking insane. I have no idea why more people haven't done this upgrade. So I have headers (took me 3 hours to install, let me know if you want a video of it, I took plenty of clips with my gopro) 3rd cat delete was 30 minutes and the valve controller was about 10-15 Minutes. Shout out to GRP for replacing the valve controller I received that was defective (Threw a code at around 6000 rpm, wouldn't properly open the valve, drove me crazy).


Here is a video of the car with the exhaust modifications:











I know it's obnoxious, but I mean I drove a Ferrari FF for 8 months absolutely straight pipe, so obviously I'm not really a refined individual, I'm a motorsport junky, I love everything about how this car sounds, it's absolutely insane, if you witnessed this coming around a bend and didn't see the car you'd think Ayrton Senna was coming around the corner in an F1 car. The noise is reminiscent of that era of F1, dirty, unrefined, crackles and pops, just perfect in every way. (I know hate me all you want).


Here are my thoughts on the car after 4 track days and 2 autocross ones (Let me know if you want the videos). The stock platform is good, not great, it's not a GT4 but it has character, it's light in the front like the GT4, but it's not a scalpel or a track weapon in stock form. I'm working with the ETS raceteam that's running one and copying some of their suspension setup. The car has something special about it, especially the sound, the oversteer is really pleasant, I like how loose she is, it's different than the M3, slower, I did 43sec on the dominion raceway track 1 autocross setup with the Emira and 41.8 with the M3. Note the M3 was on a track suspension and made almost twice the HP.


My conclusion, humbly, is that this is a very new platform that will depreciate, it'll lose it's new shiny status and maybe with time people will stop filming me at gas stations or asking me what I do for a living, and I can't wait for all that to happen, but on the other hand, setups will come out, people, like my stupid ass, will modify these, run them into the ground, blow them up and learn this little machines secrets and throughout this period of lost novelty, the real character of this car will shine, it's such a pleasant thing to drive, I love it, it's honest, loose, light compared to my M3, absolutely stunning to look at and beyond all that, it's the best sounding car I've had the pleasure of owning (yes I know).


I will not be parting with this machine for quite a while. Next I plan on proper flash (working with Jubu and Terry Burger). I also will be doing some suspension work to help with the understeer.

@sbproducer smoking hot black smoke deal!

A useful tip for our American friends - just use the options to set your units to Centigrade. Then you will rarely see temperatures above 100.

sbproducer said:

I hope you do realize that more than a handful of people on this forum have had serious issues with their Emira including but not limited to their car constantly at the dealership, parts failing over and over and waiting extended periods for parts shipping, lack of customer support from Lotus itself and/or dealerships, VF Tuner and others debating lemon law recourse, paint bubbling, Lotus dealerships charging ridiculous prices for oil changes, etc etc etc.

They might as well be the same company. Yet you don't have the balls to stand up to Lotus.

I don't know what your issue is with me but I just call it how I see it with the courage to admit when I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

Bro @kitkat has kidnapped multiple lotus execs per paint blister. Even for other people’s cars. He’s like the Batman of Lotusdom. Not just Jübü.

KatMan?

He’s too modest to brag about this himself so I will.

He is nightmare fuel at lotus.

He does a lot of questionable stuff, but his balls are beyond reproach.

Got the larger shift knob from @mr.suntorytime which is 51mm vs the factory 46mm. In addition to the larger size, it has a little more heft to it, and the extra weight helps when shifting. I used a .5 lead mechanical pencil to add a little contrast in the bottom of the lettering.



I also got the delete pipe installed. Running on Map 1 with the JB4 I couldn't tell any difference when starting the car in Tour mode or while idling. There is more of a difference in exhaust tone when switching to Sport mode though, than there was with the 3rd cat. Driving impression is there seems to be a mild improvement in torque, but that could be the psychological effect of the improved sound. While driving in Sport mode, the exhaust sounds throatier.

I can't feel enough of a difference with the delete pipe to justify spending $154 for another dyno pull, so I'm going to wait until I install the CCB brakes before I do another dyno.

On another topic:

Since I don't have 93 octane available to me, I've been working on a diagram layout for a true dual exhaust setup, and I have two versions of it. One will work with the stock exhaust manifolds and cats, and have a crossover between the two pipes. It would just need a custom muffler. I'm going to see if @Aerie can do it. I'm sure they can, but I don't know if they have a V6 Emira available to them for working out the exact details of the layout and fitment. This wouldn't need a 3rd cat and should unlock about 10-15 hp and torque. It would definitely sound better than the stock system, or even the stock system with a 3rd cat delete and/or titanium muffler. It should work fine with the stock tune and not require a custom tune. The JB4 would work with it if you already have that. This setup could be done in either stainless steel (least expensive) or titanium (lightest but more expensive). Overall this setup would probably be the best bang for the buck, and the easiest to install.

The second version uses the same basic layout, except it replaces the factory exhaust manifolds with the shorty headers that Aerie (or @GRP) already have, and would require two 200 cell sports cats, in addition to the new custom muffler. This version would provide the greatest performance increase, but would also be triple the cost of the other version because of the shorty headers and the two sports cats. This one would sound the most race-like. Performance gains should be somewhere between 20-30 hp and torque. This one may require a JB4 or some other custom tune. Not sure how the stock factory tune would handle the shorty headers.

I've designed it so both versions would use the same connecting pipes with crossover, and the same muffler, so if you wanted to start with that you could add the shorty headers and cats later if you wanted to.

The only complicated part is seeing what Aerie can come up with for a dual muffler setup that uses the factory mounting points. I've got the layout and placement worked out, just need them to create the mufflers.

The weather here is not cooperating at all. We had a fire in the foothills about 2 miles from us, and received a standby for emergency evacuation notice. Fortunately they got it under control and we didn't have to evacuate, but of course the air quality was bad with all the smoke in the air. After that we get monsoon thunder storms suddenly, and we receive an emergency flash flood warning. No floods fortunately, but the temps shot right back up to the high 90's after the rain, so now it's hot and humid. Air quality is still not as good as it usually is, so we've hardly gone out of the house. Working on the car has been out of the question. Forecast is high 90's until next weekend, when it's supposed to drop down into the high 80's.

I'll just have to wait it out until things cool down enough to dig into doing the CCB brakes and sound dampening on the wheel well liners.

Had fun yesterday morning: for the first time in my city of just over one million people, and after 15 months, I saw another Emira and wouldn't you know it, its owner had excellent taste in exterior colors (lol). We met with the help of his son, who saw my car and I at a car wash, a couple months ago. Snapped the pic below next to our newest/nicest bridge.

Hi Everyone, from way down under... Really looking forward to taking ownership on my upcoming Lotus Emira in June. Had no idea this car existed and was on the verge on settling on a new Porsche 718 GTS Cayman, when a friend steered me towards the Lotus... I had the demonstrator Emira for 3 days and it was absolutely magic. The attention I got, outweighed the 650S McLaren I had and as a daily, it was great... the rest is history.