The Test Drive: Emira vs Cayman

I think maybe you could argue it's a little bit lighter and you might argue that there's a little bit less road feel to it, but it's very free of any kick back at all again. I can see I'll struggle to see the there's there's sort of raised wheel arches which you can just sort of use to place the car I can't see the one on the left quite as easily as the one on the right so it's not as easy to place that side of the car and in terms of ride quality and comfort, so I think I can stiffen up the dampers by pushing that and I don't think on a road like this I'll necessarily want to that reduces the size of the vertical movements but it makes them a bit more severe. Actually, it's nice either way I'll put them back into the softer mode and then they breathe just flows a little bit more easily has got a really nice delicate floater at this car, it may not be quite as supple at just the top of the travel as the lotus yeah, just as I came through a couple of compressions there, it just sort of had a bit more harshness would be overstating it by quite a long way but it just sort of settled into those bumps with a bit more abruptness and I think the lotus has a little bit more suppleness in its wheel travel which going on lotus form is not unexpected with everything else thrown in though because we're talking sort of tens of degrees of difference in that, and again, it's just just as it comes over some of these, it's going to say it does, it's not enough to make a huge difference in terms of which one you'd rather drive along a road like this but just as I was about just as I was saying it whenever a couple of sort of surface changes, surface imperfections and little bridges on the road, and it, it is a bit more harsh it's not actually harsh it's just more harsh than the lotus. But in isolation, this is really good and there are you know real genuine differences between the two that make it not the easiest thing to call.

I prefer the driving position in here, I like around steering wheel, the gear shift is much better, the engines are different, I do like the response and then and the noise of this, and all right, you get it gets better the further around the rev range you go because it's naturally aspirated and you really do you know you're out of you're at the speed limit by the time you're out a second really. And I think the lotus is a bit more urgent, a bit more often because it's a bigger and it's not bigger is it? Because it's you know because it's a blown unit, the steering is I think less corrupted in here, but you get a bit more back in terms of road feel from the hydraulic system in the lotus both of them turn really nicely with a real ease and mid-engine precision.

So, in summary, they're both really good at pretty much everything and what they do is they balance aspects against each other where they're well, they have an advantage and a disadvantage. I think even you know even when it comes to the steering you can play bits off against each other, the lotus probably has a bit more road feel but it also gets a little bit more corruption this car has a really nice easy take up off of straight head which you might prefer to the slightly weightier sort of hydraulic system in the lotus it swings around about all the way through. I think overall, I would prefer to spend more time in this car but there are days and there are times there are roads when you'd have the emira every time, and it's just it's a it's a tough one to call.

What I'm pleased about is the fact that lotus makes a car that is as habitable you know is this broad between the passengers and is as easy to get into and as is ergonomically sensibly laid out as the emira is. And even if it can't quite compete in all areas with a cayman, you look at a lotus you could finally sensibly buy and say yeah, this is a good everyday sports car and that's something to be celebrated. So, thank you for joining me, uh, we're here on the youtube every week pretty much, and if it's not a first drive or a twin test then it's a preview or a track battle or a drag race or a motor show, I don't know when we last had one of those but you know they still happen so if you love it, if you subscribe, I'd love it if you like this video and if you click the bell icon, you'll never miss one. Thanks very much for joining me, appreciate it more than you know, and I'll see you next time.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to the channel where i have the brand spanking new lotus emira which is getting quite a lot of attention i think it's very exciting those sold lows in advance but exactly how good is it well let's find out i've got a porsche cayman gts to compare it again so we'll have a look inside both because lotus says they've done loads of work inside this car as well as under the skin and outside and everything else then we'll go for a drive on a brilliant road and decide which is the best sports car so this is the new emira the last petrol-powered car lotus will make it has a new chassis although it's still extruded aluminium like the avora and the elise and exige before it lightly avora it has a three and a half liter supercharged v6 in its middle making 400 horsepower here this one is a six-speed manual with a limited slip differential because it has a driver's pack now that means it costs nearly 80 000 pounds will do not to 62 miles an hour in 4.3 seconds and go on to 180 miles an hour and this is the porsche 718 cayman gts and it gets a four liter naturally aspirated flat six with all the revs so it makes 394 horsepower and through its six-speed manual gearbox it all matches the amira for speed and also for weight actually the porsche is 1405 kilos the lotus another 35 kilos on top of that the porsche costs 65 grand before options but by the time you've added some of those these two-seat mid-engine sportsters are as close a pair of rivals as you'll find right the first thing to note is that lotus says this is an early pre-production car tt tooling tooling tryout car so please they said overlook some of the interior foibles like the quality of the leather and the stitching and things like that i don't think they've got a lot to worry about this is a nice feeling interior so much nicer than lotus's past like the evora when you sit in i think the pedals are still ever so slightly offset but not not horrendously um the drums is fairly straight the instruments are digital and there is a touch screen this is one of the things they say they're still working on which is brightening some of the fonts and changing some of the fonts because they can be a tiny bit hard to read but by and large it's pretty functional and hey there's not that much to play with to get wrong if you want to change the drive mode that's on a physical button doesn't change the dampers just changes the powertrain exhaust and stability system and then the hvac controls are physical physical gear lever i've got stowage for an entire bottle of water down there two cupholders stuff in here there's a boot at the back and even a big shelf behind the seats this is a really practical pleasant plush interior i like it very much right so welcome to the inside of the cayman which is very nice dead straight driving position with a very round steering wheel and a gear lever in the right place it's a great place to sort of functional interior to to do driving from this one's quite austere it's it's quite dark it's quite straightforward which is not uncommon but you can have a brighter color but it's not as flamboyant as the lotus i don't think in any form i've got quite a lot of buttons which is nice i like buttons porsche has moved away from them in its very latest generation cars and it's gone for a bigger touchscreen with some haptic stuff i prefer the physical button so i'm hoping that when the next cayman comes along maybe volkswagen group and porsche will start to back away from all the touchscreen stuff but generally it's a really functional sensible interior that would be good to do driving from i've got a rev counter right where it should be in the middle and a speedo sensibly next to it it's also quite practical there's a little boot in the front there's one at the back and there's space uh above the engine bay the lotus has got that sort of shelf behind the seats which you could probably get a set of golf clubs in if that's your thing but i think this is probably the more practical car but let's have a drive in the lotus then have a drive in this and see which is nicer on the road so this is the amira on the move i'm in its most chilled setting which is called tor pull it through into sport and you get a little bit more waffle you might hear from the exhaust right first impressions tribe position's still pretty good i'm not a massive fan of a sort of squared off wheel but you can see how you can see the wing tops that give you uh an idea of how to place the car so it doesn't feel over wide very easy to place it's still got hydraulically assisted power steering which is sort of weighty by modern standards especially around parking speeds it's just sort of 2.8 turns lots of lock it makes a little waffle doesn't it quite a nice little rump pedal work so are okay this car has got this whole flat dead bit of travel in the break before it starts to do anything it's a good sort of inch before it does something i've spoken to a colleague who's had one and he's did the same respect to another colleague who said the car he's in uh it's a different car again wasn't such a wasn't such a problem but in this it's a bit of a problem because it means the brake goes sufficiently low that you then can't quite heal and tow it very easy because you you've lost the brake pedal you've got to point your foot back round to to get to it gearshift is has never been a strong point on anything from the elise onwards really even through the ignorer still not the world's greatest i think it's improved again it's got a sort of hesitation and then it drops in quite nicely and then it's you know the waiting is there but there's a little bit of sort of stiction to it and a sort of little graveliness that you just could do without it be nice if it was more sneaky and smooth i'd take a longer throw if it sort of fell into gear a bit a bit easier if it doesn't feel like it's always working with you and all those things are a little bit sort of familiar low to see in a way what's also familiar is the way this car rides for a sports car it's it sort of breathes and it flows and you see a lump coming and you think oh that's a big lump and then it just doesn't translate to a big input in the interior there's a really really nice flow to it in this tore suspension setting i haven't driven the one on the on the firmer suspension setup as yet i'm told it's much better on track and then you can also get michelin pilot sport uh cut tires on that as well which help get the best out of that chassis lotus doesn't recommend that you do too many laps on these goodyear eagles because it says you just wear them out on track really quickly and the steering is really really nice it's it's got a sort of calmness around straight ahead and just as you turn it it picks stuff up it doesn't kick back too much i think it maybe kicks back i don't know me does it kick back more than a nevora i can't be sure it's been it's been a while since i drove on but the waiting is it's nice to take the sort of build up of torque that you lean against as you begin to turn is nice and this car changes direction and flows very very nicely there's a little fidget to it on this road it's not the world's greatest road surface but it's not the world's worst by any means i'm not sure you'd want anything too much stiffer than this but it feels about about right just picks up a little bit of roll as it goes through corners but there's just a really pleasant lotus feel to it it just keeps that composure hit mid-corner bump there and suspension just takes it in because yeah that's fine you don't get kicked back through the steering you don't get kicked offline it's just a very very capable engaging rewarding sports car with an engine in the right place that makes the right noise it goes quickly there is the argument that a lotus should make the lightest car in its particular class and if you count the alpine a110 as being in this car's class maybe you do this isn't this is you know for its class a reasonably heavy car my counter argument would be that while i agree the best weight for a lotus is one at which it sells and the fact that you know this is more habitable than lotus's past and people want it because they can get it and drive it more easily well i think you'd cope with a few extra kilos here and there if that's if that's the answer but anyway enough of this i'll jump in the porsche and do similar stuff and find out exactly what that uh is like over what is a very sort of lumpy pockmarked quite a challenging road so this is the cayman which straight away i've done 50 yards in it straight away feels a quieter car overall drive position is great steering wheel is round gearshift is lighter and comes through and just falls into gear with less stiction and more ease and the pedals are really nicely set up got a really nice firm brake pedal doddle for heal and towing engine sounds really nice engine in the loader sounds really nice as well i think you get more induction noise in this and you probably get more exhaust noise i think in the uh in the lotus again like the lotus the steering is uncorrupted this is um electrically assisted rather than pure hydraulic there's no kickback i'm just sort of going over into a bend now and there's some bumps and stuff and you don't get any sort of kick back through it i think maybe you could argue it's a little bit i think it's a little bit lighter and you might argue that there's a little bit less road feel to it but it's very free of of any kick back at all again i can see i'll struggle to see the there's there's sort of raised wheel arches which you can just sort of use to place the car i can't see the one on the left quite as easily as the one on the right so it's not as easy to place that side of the car and in terms of ride quality and comfort so i think i can stiffen up the dampers by pushing that and i don't think on a road like this i'll necessarily want to that reduces the size of the vertical movements but it makes them a bit more severe actually it's nice either way i'll put them back into the softer mode and then they breathe just flows a little bit more easily has got a really nice delicate floater at this car it may not be quite as supple at just the top of the travel as the lotus yeah just as i came through a couple of compressions there it just sort of had a bit more harshness would be overstating it by quite a long way but it just sort of settled into those bumps with a bit more abruptness and i think the lotus has a little bit more suppleness in its wheel travel which going on lotus form is not unexpected with everything else thrown in though because we're talking sort of tens of degrees of difference in in that and again it's just just as it comes over some of these it's going to say it does it's not enough to make a huge difference in terms of which one you'd rather drive along a road like this but just as i was about just as i was saying it whenever a couple of sort of surface changes surface imperfections and little bridges on the road and it it is a bit more harsh it's not actually harsh it's just more harsh than the lotus but in isolation this is really good and there are you know real genuine differences between the two that make it not the easiest not the easiest thing to call i prefer the driving position in here i like around steering wheel the gear shift is much better the engines are different i do like the response and then and the noise of this and all right you it gets it gets better the further around the rev range you go because it's naturally aspirated and you really do you know you're out of you're at the speed limit by the time you're out a second really and i think the lotus is a bit more urgent a bit more often because it's a bigger and it's not bigger is it because it's you know because it's a blown unit the steering is i think less corrupted in here but you get a bit more back in terms of road feel from the hydraulic system in the lotus both of them turn really nicely with a real ease and mid-engine precision so i mean in summary they're both really good at pretty much everything and what they do is they balance aspects against each other where they're well they have an advantage and a disadvantage i think even you know even when it comes to the steering you can play bits off against each other the the lotus probably has a bit more road feel but it also gets a little bit more corruption this has a really nice easy take up off of straight head which you might prefer to the slightly weightier sort of hydraulic system in the lotus it swings around about all the way through i think overall i would prefer to spend more time in this car but there are days and there are times there are roads when you'd have the emira every time and it's just it's a it's it's a tough one to call what i'm pleased about is the fact that lotus makes a car that is as habitable you know is this broad between the passengers and is as easy to get into and as is ergonomically sensibly laid out as the emirate is and even if it can't quite compete in all areas with a cayman you look at a lotus you could finally sensibly buy and say yeah this is a good everyday sports car and that's something to be celebrated so thank you for joining me uh we're here on the youtube every week pretty much and if it's not a first drive or a twin test then it's a preview or a track battle or a drag race or a motor show i don't know when we last had one of those but you know they still happen so if you love it if you subscribe i'd love it if you like this video and if you click the bell icon you'll never miss one thanks very much for joining me appreciate it more than you know and i'll see you next time youhello welcome back to the channel where i have the brand spanking new lotus emira which is getting quite a lot of attention i think it's very exciting those sold lows in advance but exactly how good is it well let's find out i've got a porsche cayman gts to compare it again so we'll have a look inside both because lotus says they've done loads of work inside this car as well as under the skin and outside and everything else then we'll go for a drive on a brilliant road and decide which is the best sports car so this is the new emira the last petrol-powered car lotus will make it has a new chassis although it's still extruded aluminium like the avora and the elise and exige before it lightly avora it has a three and a half liter supercharged v6 in its middle making 400 horsepower here this one is a six-speed manual with a limited slip differential because it has a driver's pack now that means it costs nearly 80 000 pounds will do not to 62 miles an hour in 4.3 seconds and go on to 180 miles an hour and this is the porsche 718 cayman gts and it gets a four liter naturally aspirated flat six with all the revs so it makes 394 horsepower and through its six-speed manual gearbox it all matches the amira for speed and also for weight actually the porsche is 1405 kilos the lotus another 35 kilos on top of that the porsche costs 65 grand before options but by the time you've added some of those these two-seat mid-engine sportsters are as close a pair of rivals as you'll find right the first thing to note is that lotus says this is an early pre-production car tt tooling tooling tryout car so please they said overlook some of the interior foibles like the quality of the leather and the stitching and things like that i don't think they've got a lot to worry about this is a nice feeling interior so much nicer than lotus's past like the evora when you sit in i think the pedals are still ever so slightly offset but not not horrendously um the drums is fairly straight the instruments are digital and there is a touch screen this is one of the things they say they're still working on which is brightening some of the fonts and changing some of the fonts because they can be a tiny bit hard to read but by and large it's pretty functional and hey there's not that much to play with to get wrong if you want to change the drive mode that's on a physical button doesn't change the dampers just changes the powertrain exhaust and stability system and then the hvac controls are physical physical gear lever i've got stowage for an entire bottle of water down there two cupholders stuff in here there's a boot at the back and even a big shelf behind the seats this is a really practical pleasant plush interior i like it very much right so welcome to the inside of the cayman which is very nice dead straight driving position with a very round steering wheel and a gear lever in the right place it's a great place to sort of functional interior to to do driving from this one's quite austere it's it's quite dark it's quite straightforward which is not uncommon but you can have a brighter color but it's not as flamboyant as the lotus i don't think in any form i've got quite a lot of buttons which is nice i like buttons porsche has moved away from them in its very latest generation cars and it's gone for a bigger touchscreen with some haptic stuff i prefer the physical button so i'm hoping that when the next cayman comes along maybe volkswagen group and porsche will start to back away from all the touchscreen stuff but generally it's a really functional sensible interior that would be good to do driving from i've got a rev counter right where it should be in the middle and a speedo sensibly next to it it's also quite practical there's a little boot in the front there's one at the back and there's space uh above the engine bay the lotus has got that sort of shelf behind the seats which you could probably get a set of golf clubs in if that's your thing but i think this is probably the more practical car but let's have a drive in the lotus then have a drive in this and see which is nicer on the road so this is the amira on the move i'm in its most chilled setting which is called tor pull it through into sport and you get a little bit more waffle you might hear from the exhaust right first impressions tribe position's still pretty good i'm not a massive fan of a sort of squared off wheel but you can see how you can see the wing tops that give you uh an idea of how to place the car so it doesn't feel over wide very easy to place it's still got hydraulically assisted power steering which is sort of weighty by modern standards especially around parking speeds it's just sort of 2.8 turns lots of lock it makes a little waffle doesn't it quite a nice little rump pedal work so are okay this car has got this whole flat dead bit of travel in the break before it starts to do anything it's a good sort of inch before it does something i've spoken to a colleague who's had one and he's did the same respect to another colleague who said the car he's in uh it's a different car again wasn't such a wasn't such a problem but in this it's a bit of a problem because it means the brake goes sufficiently low that you then can't quite heal and tow it very easy because you you've lost the brake pedal you've got to point your foot back round to to get to it gearshift is has never been a strong point on anything from the elise onwards really even through the ignorer still not the world's greatest i think it's improved again it's got a sort of hesitation and then it drops in quite nicely and then it's you know the waiting is there but there's a little bit of sort of stiction to it and a sort of little graveliness that you just could do without it be nice if it was more sneaky and smooth i'd take a longer throw if it sort of fell into gear a bit a bit easier if it doesn't feel like it's always working with you and all those things are a little bit sort of familiar low to see in a way what's also familiar is the way this car rides for a sports car it's it sort of breathes and it flows and you see a lump coming and you think oh that's a big lump and then it just doesn't translate to a big input in the interior there's a really really nice flow to it in this tore suspension setting i haven't driven the one on the on the firmer suspension setup as yet i'm told it's much better on track and then you can also get michelin pilot sport uh cut tires on that as well which help get the best out of that chassis lotus doesn't recommend that you do too many laps on these goodyear eagles because it says you just wear them out on track really quickly and the steering is really really nice it's it's got a sort of calmness around straight ahead and just as you turn it it picks stuff up it doesn't kick back too much i think it maybe kicks back i don't know me does it kick back more than a nevora i can't be sure it's been it's been a while since i drove on but the waiting is it's nice to take the sort of build up of torque that you lean against as you begin to turn is nice and this car changes direction and flows very very nicely there's a little fidget to it on this road it's not the world's greatest road surface but it's not the world's worst by any means i'm not sure you'd want anything too much stiffer than this but it feels about about right just picks up a little bit of roll as it goes through corners but there's just a really pleasant lotus feel to it it just keeps that composure hit mid-corner bump there and suspension just takes it in because yeah that's fine you don't get kicked back through the steering you don't get kicked offline it's just a very very capable engaging rewarding sports car with an engine in the right place that makes the right noise it goes quickly there is the argument that a lotus should make the lightest car in its particular class and if you count the alpine a110 as being in this car's class maybe you do this isn't this is you know for its class a reasonably heavy car my counter argument would be that while i agree the best weight for a lotus is one at which it sells and the fact that you know this is more habitable than lotus's past and people want it because they can get it and drive it more easily well i think you'd cope with a few extra kilos here and there if that's if that's the answer but anyway enough of this i'll jump in the porsche and do similar stuff and find out exactly what that uh is like over what is a very sort of lumpy pockmarked quite a challenging road so this is the cayman which straight away i've done 50 yards in it straight away feels a quieter car overall drive position is great steering wheel is round gearshift is lighter and comes through and just falls into gear with less stiction and more ease and the pedals are really nicely set up got a really nice firm brake pedal doddle for heal and towing engine sounds really nice engine in the loader sounds really nice as well i think you get more induction noise in this and you probably get more exhaust noise i think in the uh in the lotus again like the lotus the steering is uncorrupted this is um electrically assisted rather than pure hydraulic there's no kickback i'm just sort of going over into a bend now and there's some bumps and stuff and you don't get any sort of kick back through it i think maybe you could argue it's a little bit i think it's a little bit lighter and you might argue that there's a little bit less road feel to it but it's very free of of any kick back at all again i can see i'll struggle to see the there's there's sort of raised wheel arches which you can just sort of use to place the car i can't see the one on the left quite as easily as the one on the right so it's not as easy to place that side of the car and in terms of ride quality and comfort so i think i can stiffen up the dampers by pushing that and i don't think on a road like this i'll necessarily want to that reduces the size of the vertical movements but it makes them a bit more severe actually it's nice either way i'll put them back into the softer mode and then they breathe just flows a little bit more easily has got a really nice delicate floater at this car it may not be quite as supple at just the top of the travel as the lotus yeah just as i came through a couple of compressions there it just sort of had a bit more harshness would be overstating it by quite a long way but it just sort of settled into those bumps with a bit more abruptness and i think the lotus has a little bit more suppleness in its wheel travel which going on lotus form is not unexpected with everything else thrown in though because we're talking sort of tens of degrees of difference in in that and again it's just just as it comes over some of these it's going to say it does it's not enough to make a huge difference in terms of which one you'd rather drive along a road like this but just as i was about just as i was saying it whenever a couple of sort of surface changes surface imperfections and little bridges on the road and it it is a bit more harsh it's not actually harsh it's just more harsh than the lotus but in isolation this is really good and there are you know real genuine differences between the two that make it not the easiest not the easiest thing to call i prefer the driving position in here i like around steering wheel the gear shift is much better the engines are different i do like the response and then and the noise of this and all right you it gets it gets better the further around the rev range you go because it's naturally aspirated and you really do you know you're out of you're at the speed limit by the time you're out a second really and i think the lotus is a bit more urgent a bit more often because it's a bigger and it's not bigger is it because it's you know because it's a blown unit the steering is i think less corrupted in here but you get a bit more back in terms of road feel from the hydraulic system in the lotus both of them turn really nicely with a real ease and mid-engine precision so i mean in summary they're both really good at pretty much everything and what they do is they balance aspects against each other where they're well they have an advantage and a disadvantage i think even you know even when it comes to the steering you can play bits off against each other the the lotus probably has a bit more road feel but it also gets a little bit more corruption this has a really nice easy take up off of straight head which you might prefer to the slightly weightier sort of hydraulic system in the lotus it swings around about all the way through i think overall i would prefer to spend more time in this car but there are days and there are times there are roads when you'd have the emira every time and it's just it's a it's it's a tough one to call what i'm pleased about is the fact that lotus makes a car that is as habitable you know is this broad between the passengers and is as easy to get into and as is ergonomically sensibly laid out as the emirate is and even if it can't quite compete in all areas with a cayman you look at a lotus you could finally sensibly buy and say yeah this is a good everyday sports car and that's something to be celebrated so thank you for joining me uh we're here on the youtube every week pretty much and if it's not a first drive or a twin test then it's a preview or a track battle or a drag race or a motor show i don't know when we last had one of those but you know they still happen so if you love it if you subscribe i'd love it if you like this video and if you click the bell icon you'll never miss one thanks very much for joining me appreciate it more than you know and i'll see you next time you\n"