Lotus Celebrates 50 Years at the Hethel Factory with a Special Evora 400

Lotus Evora 400 Hethel Edition (Credit: © Lotus)

The Europeans know how to celebrate a birthday, especially in the automotive realm. Recently, Lotus celebrated 50 years of manufacturing in its Hethel, Norfolk factory with the launch of a limited-edition Evora 400 bearing the famous factory’s name. Meet the Evora 400 Hethel Edition.

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This special rig boasts a series of special color combinations that include Essex Blue, Motorsport Black, or Racing Green exterior options with black leather, red leather, or Alcantara interior trim options. Lotus implies that only certain colors go together, but it failed to lay out what the exact schemes were. Rounding out the modifications to this celebratory buggy are silver forged-aluminum wheels, contrasting calipers, and bespoke graphics.

Lotus Evora 400 Hethel Edition (Credit: © Lotus)

Under the hood, the mechanics remain unchanged. While I wish there were some tweaks here, I can’t complain about the Evora 400’s base setup, which uses a supercharged 3.5-liter V-6 to inject a mighty 400 horsepower and 302 pound-feet of torque into the lightweight body. This combination of power and lightness gets the Evora 400 Hethel Edition to 60 mph in just 4.1 seconds and up to a top speed of 186 mph with the manual transmission or 174 mph with the auto.

Lotus didn’t mention just how many of these Hethel Edition Evora 400s it’ll manufacture, but it did announce that each one will run £75,500 ($109,064). There is no mention of a release here in the U.S., so my gut tells me this is a Europe-only model. Stay tuned for more info.