Which do you suppose weighs more...

[Mark Tucker]

A Buick Electra (curb weight 4300-5000 lbs depending on year and options)... or a Lotus Eletre?

Now there's something I never thought I'd seriously have to ponder, whether a Lotus will weigh the same as a Buick. That thump you just heard was Colin Chapman rolling over in his grave.

[tophercrowder]

See, for all the taxes they lose on gas, they will gain through curb weight registration fees.

[HammerheadFistpunch]

@Mark-Tucker The iPace weighs 4800 lbs, which is technically the same weight as my Land Cruiser stock.

[Highlander]

@Mark-Tucker I came looking for a nice resolution photo of a buick electra and now I am feeling let down.

[Mark Tucker]

@Highlander Sorry, meant to include the yellow one from the thumbnail. Fixed now. Your picture is better, though.

[pos_camaro]

@Mark-Tucker It surprises a lot of people that my "big, heavy" Camaro weighs 3400lbs and that's with a cast iron V8. Swap in an aluminum LS and it's not bad at all.

[HammerheadFistpunch]

@pos_camaro I remember getting into an argument with a guest lecturer in college once because I asked how his research about road safety was affected by the increase in the weight of vehicles. He contented (as did most of the class) that I had it backwards. He insisted that cars were lighter than ever. Granted this was in the late 90's and we hadn't seen maximum swell yet, but even then cars weren't remotely light.

[siennaman]

@HammerheadFistpunch he was still shopping the survivors from the '80s. If he'd had access to new cars, he'd have known better..

[LooseonExit]

@HammerheadFistpunch

The Cruiser weighs as much as the ZR2 crew gasser? Color me surprised - that's 300lbs more than I thought. No wonder they're brick shithouse stout.

[ranwhenparked]

@HammerheadFistpunch Back when I used to listen to terrestrial radio, I remember a local blowhard host used to go on and on about how "they" were making cars less safe by demanding better fuel economy, making cars smaller and lighter, he would shift to that topic a lot, and I'd just question whether he'd been in a showroom since 1986, or, really, if he had driven on the road or walked through a parking lot in the past 30+ years.

We have an obese population, and we want our vehicles to match

[HammerheadFistpunch]

@LooseonExit They are porkers, and the GX is even heavier

[Highlander]

@Mark-Tucker and my Buick had a 430 cubic inch V8!

[Roadkilled]

@Mark-Tucker
If you pick the right Buick, it gets interesting. The second generation Skyhawk weighed between 2500 - 2900 pounds depending on the configuration.

[StreetsofPerth]

@Mark-Tucker My money's on the Lotus being as heavy, if not heavier. A Polestar 2 can weigh up to around 4600lb and it's a much smaller car with a smaller battery than the Lotus. The Eletre is a suprisingly decent-looking thing and really more of a wagon than an SUV (hurrah!), but it's the complete antithesis of the Lotus philosophy.

[ibRAD]

@Mark-Tucker I don't know which weighs more, but I know which one I'd like to drive more.

[SilentbutnotreallyDeadly]

@Mark-Tucker
The essence of the question though is the new Lotus as light as it could be given the constraints.

Chapman was only interested in small sports cars and he and his made them as light and as powerful as technically possible given the required sizes and use characteristics of the cars at the time.

The version of Lotus responsible for the Esprit and Elise arguably followed the same ethos but they were still heavy compared to the Chapman era cars.

Same goes for the version of Lotus that delivered the Evora...

Whose to say that this version of the Lotus brand (which has as much in common with Chapman's Lotus as the current MG brand does with the MG brand in Chapman's day) is really that much different in ethos? It's a large EV...it was never going to be a lightweight car.

[OPPOsaurus WRX]

So it will weigh half as much as the new electric Hummer. That makes it seem pretty good. There does look like a lot of unneeded stuff, like the active wing in the back, that probably could be done without to lighten it up and simplify