Lots of acceleration can make electric cars feel like a one-trick pony. But that’s not why Ford’s Pony car is true to its roots.
Nothing slices through London traffic like a ’68 Mustang. You may think the vehicle of choice a Swatch-sired Smart or tiny tandem Twizy, but in the cut and thrust of the metropolis, it’s about how the other drivers treat you.
Everything gives way for a classic Ford Mustang. Pedestrians may cuss you for being in a Roller or Range Rover or drivers cut you up in a 458. But with a 390ci rumble, you’ll part traffic like that scene in Bruce Almighty where Jim Carey is driving a Saleen.
You see a Mustang isn’t about the way it goes, or handles. It’s about the way it makes you feel. The wall or torque, on top of the world, invincible.
The Lotus Elise, still the benchmark for handling is very different. It’s frail, precise. You are lost before his time racing legend Jim Clark at Brands Hatch, judging Druids to the inch. Again, it makes you feel as though each journey is an adventure. You are calculating each curve and carriageway with precision. Commute to work every day in a Lotus you never get that feeling that there were bits of the trip you don’t remember.
How Electric SUVs Can Be Spiritual Successors To Great Cars Of The Past
So it is with these emotions to the fore that we contemplate the SUVs from Ford and Lotus. The Mustang and Eletre. Car cognoscenti may be waiting for the fashion to pass, but they have spent two decades in that mode. The SUV is here to stay. Sorry.
Lotus needs an SUV to stay in business. It’s eyeing the success of the Cayenne which saved Porsche from Bankruptcy and Macan. We’ve not driven an Eletre, no journalist has, but have had a good crawl around some late prototypes at Lotus in Hethel. We experienced the new car at an exclusive customer event, others who were invited rolled in driving Range Rovers, Rolls Royces and Ferraris.
And what we found was a fantastic interpretation of the SUV breed. It looks good. Not The Ian Callum Designed Jaguar F-Pace or Aston Martin DBX, produced under the stewardship of Marek Reichman, sensuous but more attractive than the bullfrog aping Porsches, anonymous Audis or buck-toothed BMWs. And there is an air of quality. But that is the problem.
How The Recipe Of Adding Lightness Needs To Be Used In The Future
Lotus CEO Matt Windle told Hotcars that the Eletre will live up to the tag line of “For the driver”. He cited the ability of the center LCD screen to fold flat so that it was not a driving distraction as part of this. It’s cool and clever but fails in the Colin Chapman dictum of “Simplify and add lightness”. The Lotus founder would have used cantilevers, springs, and magnets for the screen to fold away without weighty motors.
Perhaps, what disappointed most was the panel in the boot. It lifted out to reveal extra storage space below. That panel was heavy, really heavy. One little detail but it’s such which defines the ethos of Eletre and that’s not very Lotus.
There are lots of good reasons to have cameras instead of rearview mirrors. Better performance at night improved aerodynamics and elimination of blind spots, but they do not “Simplify and add lightness”.
Customer service has taken a step up. With the car that can already claim to have saved Lotus with 10,000 sales: The Emira, Lotus has been amazed at how many customers wanted to collect from the factory. That may not be possible with the Eletre, what with it being made in the Lotus purpose built factory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. But if European customers want to collect one from Hethel, Norfolk, then that’s possible too. Customer handovers are handled by Scott Walker, head of Hethel retail operations. He’s passionate about the brand first at top Lotus ealer Bell & Colvill, and now in-house at Lotus. Ford is also making the Mach-E in China, but just for local consumption.
There is a huge amount which is clever and beautiful about the car. Its stats are incredible: we can expect a mind-blowing Nordschleife number, but we suspect it will feel more like a muscle car than a Lotus.
And that is why the Mach E is on brand. It feels brutish. Like a bulldog, ready to take the road by the scruff off the neck and use torque as a substitute for subtlety. I have driven a number of Mach Es, including the GT. Within the confines of being electric and an SUV, they have a Mustang approach to life. If you want Ford finesse, go for a Focus RS, but if you want the wall of power; the Mustang delivers. Driving a Mercedes-Benz EQC back to back against a Mustang can reveal how much more exciting it is compared to the German EV. It wasn’t just the power it was the way the Ford harnessed it. The EQC had brakes that couldn’t cope with the bulk and handling that treated corners as a bit of a surprise. The Mach-E takes the attributes of the Mustang and turns it into the car people want to buy. It won’t get you through London traffic like its granddaddy, but when you get to the open road the genes have flowed through.
