Eyes may roll but the phrase ‘let’s be having ya’ springs to mind when I think of Lotus. Though the luxury British carmaker’s name no longer adorns the yellow and green shirts of Delia Smith’s beloved Norwich City FC, I can’t shake the association. But maybe I don’t need to as few car unveilings in recent memory have given off ‘let’s be having ya’ energy quite like the unexpected and mad new Lotus Theory 1 concept .
Put simply, this concept car embodies where Lotus wants to go next. The visual narrative of it is deliberately very clearcut. It’s a full blown (yet stripped back) supercar comprising only 10 materials – the industry average is 100.
It has a Batmobile -esque steering wheel and central driving position with next-level driver engagement and the kind of intuitive technology that could make any future Lotus driving experience all the more humanising. “It’s to join the dots between everything that currently exists, bringing some of the heritage together and demonstrating what that means in the future,” confirms Ben Payne , Lotus chief creative officer. “We think about the spirit of the Esprit and why it’s lasted.
It has been so iconic because it’s done in a logical and calculated way – we want there to be a bit of that in this project.” The inception point came from a project inside the creative team at Lotus HQ they call the Theory Lab – where Payne says people go away and develop something slowly whenever they've got a bit of.