Ride Height..... hence wheel gap....official answer

[Foxy87]

It’s a 680mm (26.8”) tyre family. So the vehicle will be set up to have that size and all of the wheel and tyre options will maintain the size by varying width, sidewall height (aspect ratio) and rim size. If you fitted 24” rims you’d have just 1.4” of sidewall so 245/15 x 20 tyres. The gap to the wheel arch would still be the same but the chances are you’d have a very sore back!

This. Thank you.

 

[ADC]

It’s a 680mm (26.8”) tyre family. So the vehicle will be set up to have that size and all of the wheel and tyre options will maintain the size by varying width, sidewall height (aspect ratio) and rim size. If you fitted 24” rims you’d have just 1.4” of sidewall so 245/15 x 20 tyres. The gap to the wheel arch would still be the same but the chances are you’d have a very sore back! By the time you’ve driven a few miles, launched the car over a few sleeping policemen and performed a couple of emergency stops it will look a little better. Or you could sit on the front fender if anyone walks past! It always looks worse at the front end because the rear suspension carries the power train load and tends to squat under acceleration. The front end has to deal with braking loads and so when static is inclined to sit high until it settles with time.

This. Thank you.

 

[kitkat]

View attachment 25323

Glad someone got it.

 

[Foxy87]

I know, doesnt change the fact that it was kinda pointless…🤷🏻‍♂️

anyway… BTT.

IMO the car would benefit from dropping it an inch from stock height. It does look so good in all the press photos and when you see the car IRL it just hasnt got that presence like on the pics and I think its due to the (for me) too big of a wheel gap.

 

[dgrace]

Just for reference, this is what you get when you go to Lotus's Official site for the Emira:
(https://www.lotuscars.com/en-US/emira)

Obviously Lotus thinks the car looks better this way, otherwise they'd just show it with realistic ride height. It's a shame there's such a discrepancy; Porsche seems to market their cars accurately in this regard.

 

[Magicman]

Man these gaps are absolutely huge…

Mine, touring looks nothing like those gaps 😄 that photography is very mis leading (unintentionally I know)

This is my touring as sat on the drive right

now after 900mls. Not porsche GT ride height but Perfectly acceptable looking ride height imo, doesn't look odd to me 🤷🏻

 

[Foxy87]

Your car looks great from that point of view. When I was at my dealers place, there were like 10 Emiras. Some of them looked really off, some of them looked like your car. Dont know if it had something to do with the piece that my dealer removes to get the car just a little lower.

 

[dgrace]

The van looks great!

 

[Foxy87]

Sits lower than the emira😂😂

 

[DaaS]

Even has front and rear fender flares. Nice!

 

[Eagle7]

Just for reference, this is what you get when you go to Lotus's Official site for the Emira:
(https://www.lotuscars.com/en-US/emira)
View attachment 25325

Obviously Lotus thinks the car looks better this way, otherwise they'd just show it with realistic ride height. It's a shame there's such a discrepancy; Porsche seems to market their cars accurately in this regard.

This is either the original hand-assembled non-running studio model, or it's CGI because those wheels are sticking out past the edge of the wheel wells. In order for the top of the tire edges to be illuminated like that, they have to be sticking out past the top edge, especially the rear tire. That of course is not realistic. Real-life cars show the wheels are inside the wheel wells which makes it look like the wheel gap is dramatically greater than this unrealistic image.

You can see it's a left-hand drive car, and either an automatic or the early studio model with the yellow steering wheel stripe. The yellow calipers do not match the yellow of the Lotus logo. This is an old image. Should they be using it? No, but then this is Lotus.

For those of you who suffer from WGS (Wheel Gap Syndrome), you'll have to use spacers on the wheels to achieve this look. Probably at least a 3" (7.62 cm) spacer to push the wheels out far enough. The tires will definitely contact the body if there's any upward movement which will be loud and sound horrible, but at least it will look cool when that happens.

 

[K_Squared]

I know, doesnt change the fact that it was kinda pointless…🤷🏻‍♂️

anyway… BTT.

IMO the car would benefit from dropping it an inch from stock height. It does look so good in all the press photos and when you see the car IRL it just hasnt got that presence like on the pics and I think its due to the (for me) too big of a wheel gap.

I have to agree with you on this 100%. While some may think that the obsession with wheel gap is nonsense, to me it has a major impact on the appearance of the vehicle. TBH I never was a big 'can't have wheel gap' kind of guy until a couple years ago when I got my current 340i and someone said "man you gotta get rid of those wheel gaps". I was a little surprised at first but it's one of those things where once you start noticing it, you just can't go back. After lowering mine by about 1" using H&R Sport Springs and adding some spacers, the car looked SO MUCH more sporty, aggressive, and just better overall.

I will almost certainly be looking for the least-impactful method to lower the Emira a bit to accomplish this once I have it unless the gap is more like what @Magicman's looks like. It's very odd that they seem to vary so much.

 

[K_Squared]

This is either the original hand-assembled non-running studio model, or it's CGI because those wheels are sticking out past the edge of the wheel wells. In order for the top of the tire edges to be illuminated like that, they have to be sticking out past the top edge, especially the rear tire. That of course is not realistic. Real-life cars show the wheels are inside the wheel wells which makes it look like the wheel gap is dramatically greater than this unrealistic image.

You can see it's a left-hand drive car, and either an automatic or the early studio model with the yellow steering wheel stripe. The yellow calipers do not match the yellow of the Lotus logo. This is an old image. Should they be using it? No, but then this is Lotus.

For those of you who suffer from WGS (Wheel Gap Syndrome), you'll have to use spacers on the wheels to achieve this look. Probably at least a 3" (7.62 cm) spacer to push the wheels out far enough. The tires will definitely contact the body if there's any upward movement which will be loud and sound horrible, but at least it will look cool when that happens.

7.62cm spacer??? Surely you're joking. 15-20mm would probably make quite a big impact. I did laugh at the last part of your statement though

 

[Foxy87]

This is either the original hand-assembled non-running studio model, or it's CGI because those wheels are sticking out past the edge of the wheel wells. In order for the top of the tire edges to be illuminated like that, they have to be sticking out past the top edge, especially the rear tire. That of course is not realistic. Real-life cars show the wheels are inside the wheel wells which makes it look like the wheel gap is dramatically greater than this unrealistic image.

You can see it's a left-hand drive car, and either an automatic or the early studio model with the yellow steering wheel stripe. The yellow calipers do not match the yellow of the Lotus logo. This is an old image. Should they be using it? No, but then this is Lotus.

For those of you who suffer from WGS (Wheel Gap Syndrome), you'll have to use spacers on the wheels to achieve this look. Probably at least a 3" (7.62 cm) spacer to push the wheels out far enough. The tires will definitely contact the body if there's any upward movement which will be loud and sound horrible, but at least it will look cool when that happens.

I think (or better hope) everyone is aware of that the Press Photos like the one showed above are not realistic and its not about that it should come exactly this way. But IRL it differ so much from these press photos and from the car they showed on presentation, that it is just kind of a bummer. I have basically never been a wheel gap person and have only lowered one of my cars so far with coilover setup and this was only due to being a track car and to have a proper setup for the tracktires with different alignement etc.
But when approaching some Emiras on my dealers lot it was the first thing that caught my eye and I blame Lotus for it due to that press shots. Andlike already someone stated, its weird that the cars vary so much. All it needs is a slight drop of about an inch, I dont really care for spacers though but I have to agree they do look good. My preference would be handling though so if there would be a compromise, it would be a nogo for me. We have absolute sublime roads here so there wouldnt be a drawback to drop it an inch and the car would benefit from it IMO.

 

[dgrace]

I think an inch is pretty aggressive; I'd just like the gap to match front/rear. The configurator isn't as slammed as the Lotus homepage but is still quite a bit lower than reality, and the gap is consistent front to back. The production cars seem to sit 5-10mm higher at the front.

 

[Eagle7]

The difference of apparent wheel gaps is going to have a lot to do with whether or not a particular car has settled on its suspension yet, what the tire pressures are, and the color of the body. If you're worried about your car, give it time for the suspension to settle-in, and set your tire pressures to whatever level you're going to use. Then decide.

Something else to keep in mind is from my experience with Michelin tires, their sidewalls stick out farther than other brands I've used, even for tires of the exact same size. The apparent difference may be somewhat of an optical illusion between the visible sidewalls of the Michelin tires versus the Goodyears.

In the two photos that show a Michelin and a Goodyear, you can see the Michelin bulges out past the edge of the rim, while the Goodyear has a protection edge that sticks out past, but then slants inward above that. Two tires of the same size that have very different visual looks.

 

[Foxy87]

Sorry guys, my bad. I thought an inch is about 1.55cm… but its 2.55cm… sry, only use metric system🤦🏼‍♂️

I agree, an inch is too much. About 1.5cm would be the sweetspot for me.

 

[Rudolph]

* * * * *
True wheelgap......

 

[Magicman]

The van looks great!

Thanks, i love my Van 😄👍🏼

 

[Magicman]

Sits lower than the emira😂😂

I've lowered it 50mm 😄 it probably does have less arch gap than the emira yes 🤦