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Bastard cars: there have been a lot of them over the years. Cars like today’s Toyota Supra, for example, which more than just shares its bones with the BMW Z4. And since we’re talking Toyota, the GR86 coupe, too, was co-developed with Subaru to be sold alongside the twin BRZ. There’s the Abarth 124 Spider based on the Mazda MX-5 and, in the more distant past, the reworked Honda series that Rover popularly sold in the 1980s and 1990s. The Alfa Romeo Arna and Nissan Cherry Europe have significantly less. of success, equally unwanted binoculars spawned by an Alfa-Nissan one night stand. This pair was an ill-chosen mix of Alfasud and Cherry, resulting in a machine designed with a badge significantly inferior to the models from which it was mixed.
The Arna is far from the only failed child of such marriages of convenience, another being the 2006 Lotus Europa S. Considering its name, you might wonder what the other source of genes is, and those of. among you who know it might well say ‘Vauxhall’, the brand of the GM era supplying not only the engine for the Europa, but also the long-wheelbase VX220 variant on the Lotus Elise platform. another manufacturer involved, and if the project had been carried out as originally planned, the Europa would not have been a Lotus at all, but a Proton. More than that, it would have been built in Malaysia rather than Hethel.
The idea was to add some much needed glamor to Proton’s showrooms, expand the Malaysian lineup in new directions, and make Lotus a profit. In the end, Proton thought wisely (would you buy an expensive sports coupe at a showroom selling Savvys and Gen-2 hatchbacks?), And Hethel instead decided to sell 500 Lotus-branded units built in Norfolk.
Despite the change in mission and brand, there was no reason why this all-new Europa couldn’t be a good record.
Lotus made many award-winning bastards, combining its own genes with those of Ford to produce two generations of Lotus Cortina, with Chrysler Europe to produce the WRC-winning Sunbeam Lotus and with former General Motors owners to produce the beautifully fast Vauxhall Lotus Carlton . There were many others as well.
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Source: www.autocar.co.uk
This notice was published: 2021-07-22 10:55:53
