A UTUMN AT POTASH LANE, Hethel, and the wind still whips across this ex-USAF airfield with defiant ferocity, just as the gnarled tarmac and concrete roadways of the 1940s, still visible in places here and there, are reassuringly familiar. Yet these days it’s juxtaposed with a reminder of Lotus’s rollercoaster history over the past decade: the modern test track, with its smooth asphalt, and the shadow of an unfinished factory, the building’s ghostly structural frame exposed to the elements; reminders, positive and otherwise, of the turbulent ‘Bahar era’ that promised so much, but ultimately delivered so little.
Today, however, we have three cars before us that define the most recent era at Lotus – the Gales years: three new models that little bit faster, lighter, keener than the previous pinnacles of…
