supercar456

  Lotus is already far into the development of one of the most important models in its history: the   Lotus Eletre , an SUV tasked with generating sales volumes the British marque has never seen before. It’s the key component in Chinese   parent company Geely’s   commitment to “restoring   Lotus   into being a leading global luxury brand”. Autocar has learned that the high-riding model, internally codenamed the Lambda, will adopt fully electric power from launch in 2022, rather than hybrid propulsion, as was originally believed. Production will also centre on China, where  demand for premium electric vehicles remains strong . Conceived under former Lotus boss Jean-Marc Gales, the SUV project first surfaced in 2016. At that time, it was understood the intention was to initially launch the model with a high-performance petrol-electric powertrain like those used by Geely sibling brands  Polestar  and  Volvo . However, the EV market was sign...

  The new   Toyota GR Yaris   has actually been coming for even longer than most of us may realise. While this car’s had an extensively previewed gestation, it’s the first ground-up performance car that Toyota has developed ‘all on its own’ in some twenty years. By which is meant ‘without the help of another dedicated car-maker,’ of course. Because believe me, to have made a hot hatchback this good, Toyota must have had quite a lot of help from some very clever people who been spending a lot of weekends with messrs Makinen, Meeke, Tanak and Latvala. So, now that we’ve driven it – extensively, on a mix of UK roads and on track, and in its most alluringly specialized mechanical specification, we should add – we can at last confirm what matters most: that the hubbub of anticipation might actually have undersold the GR Yaris. This is a wonderfully exciting, amazingly capable and strangely evocative drivers’car, and a very rare and special hot hatchback indeed. First...