Auto News 5

Sometimes, even when you work at Automobile Magazine, you don't care if a car is fast or good looking, if it's refined or luxurious, or if its seats have the right amount of bolstering. You just want it to get you home. That's exactly the sort of mood I was in when I emerged from the office last week around midnight, eyes bleary from proofreading articles for the upcoming issue (it's a good one). It was a cold, rainy night, and I was glad to have the keys to a Toyota RAV4.

New Yorkers would have been impressed if we'd told them that the makers of the Aptera 2e, the two-seat, three-wheeled oddity we were driving around Soho, promised the equivalent of more than 200 mpg and a 100-mile range between charges of its battery pack. But we never got that far. The mind of every single New Yorker who saw us was blown at first sight. We could have told them anything.

With the Evora, Lotus expands from track-day toys like the Elise and the Exige into the realm of the high-performance GT. Although the Evora follows recent Lotus practice by using an aluminum-spaceframe structure and a mid-mounted engine, the car is much larger, more luxurious, and more livable than any of the current models. The standard setup is a two-seater with a cargo deck behind the front seats, but a two-plus-two configuration is also offered, as are luxuries like navigation, a backup camera, and a full leather interior. The engine is again sourced from Toyota - this time the Camry's 3.5-liter V-6. In the hands of Lotus engineers, it makes 276 hp and 252 lb-ft of torque. A six-speed manual is standard, but an automatic eventually will be added. Lotus claims this heretofore humble engine will propel its new GT to 160 mph and provide a five-second 0-to-60-mph sprint. The Evora will be the top-model Lotus when it arrives here early next year, priced from about $70,000.