2011 Lotus Evora GTE

The Lotus Evora GTE was built to permit its racing variant to be able to race under the GT3 and LM GTE regs. Based on the Evora floorplan but with an extra track width of 110mm, the car was designed to have a lower center of gravity, to be lighter and faster.

This Evora was completed after the Dany Bahar era of Lotus and when many of these GTE's were returned to Lotus by Bahar's appointed Brand Ambassadors. Those Evora GTE's were developed under the leadership of former Group Lotus CEO Dany Bahar and equipped with a X-trac 426 6-speed sequential gearbox. This true race-specification sequential gearbox was designed for use through rear-wheel-drive, pairing dog-engagement gears with a single clutch. These racing gearboxes allowed for full-throttle clutchless flat shifting and precise automatic rev-matching (throttle blipping) on downshifts.

Only 20 official factory road cars were manufactured by Lotus. The vehicle was originally conceived during the Dany Bahar era as a race-homologation special. It generated over 114 initial orders from the Chinese market alone. The ambitious project was abruptly halted when Dany Bahar was dismissed and the company changed strategy. Some say strategy, some say embezzlement, whatever the case, the project was stopped midstream.

In 2017, 10 cars were assembled with the help of Lotus Racing Roger Bennington Stratton Motor Company using both the Returned Brand Ambassador GTE's as well as the Overstock Cars acquired the remaining official Evora GT race program components and chassis directly from Lotus and built a limited series of hand-built cars (widely documented as a small batch of road-registered track specials) using genuine GTE parts. They featured the aggressive, widebody carbon-fiber styling identical to the factory Evora GTE homologation specials.

This Evora GTE's is powered by the 3.5 litre supercharged V6 engine shared by the other Evora and Exige variants but having been re-worked and tuned by Swindon Race Engines. This process involves major engine strengthening, forged pistons, con rods, higher lift camshafts and a specially re-worked exhaust system making this a very lively engine with an instant throttle response, producing an astonishing 438hp. In this specification it will accelerate from a standing start to 60mph in an astonishing 4 seconds. The throttle response is immediate and impressive. Combine this with a cerb weight of just 2,815 lbs, this Evora GTE not only follows Colin Chapmans motto, simplify then add lightness, it is not only lightweight, it's also extremely powerful.