Lotus unveils five new Emira liveries to tribute Ayrton Senna’s F1 history

This new limited-edition Lotus Emira is inspired by and dedicated to F1 legend Ayrton Senna.

The beauty of this limited-edition model is that five models exist, and each one is limited.

Each of those five cars is a tribute to the specific livery of the F1 Lotus cars.

Only 60 units will be built.

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A limited-edition Lotus Emira to celebrate Ayrton Senna and the brand’s F1 heritage

The engine is the same 2.0-liter four-cylinder as the standard Lotus Emira, putting out 360 horsepower and giving the car a 0-62mph of 4.5 seconds, but each car is customize to honor Lotus’ history.

Lotus will build five different versions of the new Emira, and each one is inspired by a specific Lotus F1 car, including two driven by Senna himself.

The darkest – and oldest – of these cars is the dark green Type 25 that won the 1963 F1 title with Jim Clark at the wheel.

Then there’s the shadow grey-and-gold Type 78 driven by Mario Andretti in 1977, and third ‘non-Senna’ vehicle is is inspired by the Type 86, which introduced Lotus’ twin-chassis design of 1980.

There are two versions inspired by Ayrton Senna’s cars.

The shadow grey-and-gold Type 97T recalls Senna’s first GP win in 1985, and the yellow-and-blue Type 99T is a tribute to Senna’s Monaco GP win in 1987.

Only 12 units will be produced for each of these five liveries.

What’s going on at Lotus?

The Emira is an important car for Lotus.

It was announced as the last-ever internal combustion Lotus, and that is probably not going to change.

This is because even though the company has since changed its strategy and canceled its plan to go EV-only, the new idea is to make either hybrids or EVs.

This means that, either way, there probably never will be another gas-powered Lotus that isn’t also a hybrid.

To be fair, Lotus has done everything right.

They’ve unveiled a new sedan with record-breaking charging capabilities and a new SUV that’s faster than most supercars.

The problem is, the demand for EVs just isn’t there in the luxury market.

Even though everyone is still working on electric vehicles, most high-end automakers admit that an EV-only strategy is too risky in this sector because – put simply – luxury car buyers still mostly want gas cars.

This has become so evident that even Rimac, an EV only hypercar brand, is considering going in the opposite direction and making an internal combustion car for the first time.

Mate Rimac himself, CEO of Bugatti-Rimac and founder of Rimac, said this in no uncertain terms during his speech at the 2024 Financial Times Future of the Car Summit.

“[Regulators] are pushing stuff on us we don’t want. [But] Rimac isn’t exclusively electric; it’s doing whatever is most exciting at the time,” he said.

Watch this space, then.