What’s been going on with Lotus for the last couple decades?

Okay, that might be a little bit of a loaded question. I’m a little too young to have been able to fully appreciate the era when the Esprit was a hot-ticket item so maybe I’m lacking a little too much context to have a grasp of Lotus’ place in the world at that time. All I have to go off of is the more recent weirdness coming from them since the time I’ve been aware of their offerings, and as time goes on, one thing is becoming clear to me:

Lotus is Unreal. I don’t mean that in a hyperbolic way, I mean Lotus has essentially followed in the footsteps of the PC game of the late 90s. Much like the Unreal franchise, Lotus certainly made a name for themselves early on in their existence with excellent quality releases and superior technological prowess. Over time, however; Unreal: The Game has become less relevant in the gaming space every year as Epic Games, their developer, (yes- the Fortnite company) has focused less effort on on Unreal, the game and much, much more on developing and advancing the Unreal Engine for licensing by other developers. This was a smart move, and these days you probably can’t go a full (non-camping in the wilderness) day without accidentally viewing or interacting with some form of media riding on the shoulders of Epic Games’ 3D game engine.

It’s not hard to notice a lot of parallels between that and what it seems like Lotus has been up to as of late. The Lotus models that stand out to me are actually pretty underwhelming compared to how many Lotus-adjacent vehicles exist. This isn’t news to anyone, but even the first Tesla model produced was a thinly-veiled electrified Lotus Elise. It doesn’t stop there, everyone from Hennessey, to Infiniti, to Rinspeed and even Vauxhall, among many others have toyed with a Lotus-based version of whatever they were working on at the time, and to me anyways, they all sort of overshadow what Lotus themselves have been putting out, which up until very recently resembled more of a Miata-meets-go-kart than a true high-end sports car. This leads us to the Radford Type 62-2 we spotted at SEMA 2022.

Sure, it may be based on the Exige, but the Radford looks a lot more super and a lot less 3/4 scale Great Value Porsche 918. The power has also been increased from 430 to 500hp which, let’s face it, is now the bare minimum to even get anyone’s attention these days. Although Lotus has always been all over the place with their services, performing suspension tuning for tons of other makes, running F1 teams, and even building road racing bicycles, I feel that given the proliferation of Lotus-based cars, and the sheer variety of offerings they have allowed to exist, I think it’s say to say that Lotus has settled into what they do best as of late. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Nobody besides a few hardcore fans may be playing Unreal Tournament anymore, but everyone and their cousin has seen a Star War or two made with the help of Unreal Engine without even realizing it. And that’s exactly how Lotus, and the Radford Type 62-2 feel to me.

Between Bryan’s lifted Crown Vic and our 77 Monte Carlo “Survival Vehicle” build, I’d like to think that we here at GENHO were pretty active during the early days of the modern off road passenger car craze that seems to have taken over social media in the last few years. Living at the very edge of town in the Arizona desert, we grew up thrashing whatever vehicles we were able to afford on as many dirt roads as possible so it only makes sense to want to take that feeling to the next level, regardless of what the vehicles’ designers original intentions were for the car. Plus there’s just something oddly satisfying about using the “wrong” tool for the job sometimes. I think that mentality has really stuck with us over the years.

My first car was a 1988 Corolla SR5 that I purchased from a friend’s parents for $300 in late 2000. It was obviously neither an off road vehicle nor particularly desirable. The wrong tool for almost any job, you might say. To this day, any time I mention having owned an 80s Corolla 5 Speed coupe, I’m met with an excited “oh, an AE86?” which i’m forced to deflate via admission that it was in fact, just an utterly enervated front-wheel drive AE92 with a pretty mean trailer hitch-shaped dent on the hood and a bunch of Steve Vai tapes sliding around under the seats (they came with the car). Although it wasn’t particularly fast safe, or even that much fun to drive on the road at all, it did move under its own dog-tired power (sort of), which meant it was still a blast to throw around out in the desert where it spent much of its short life under my ownership. Feel free to put your imagination to use on how that went down.

I think it’s human nature to view the past with rose-colored glasses, and sometimes, when I recall the fun we used to have tearing up every expanse of dirt we could find our way into, the old Corolla doesn’t seem like such a POS in my head. It may as well had been a Raptor or a TRX as far as 17 year old me was concerned. It was more than enough to get me into (and out of) some pretty rough medium speed situations.

Fast forward over 20 years (has it really been that long?) and I’m at SEMA 2022 stumbling across a fully realized manifestation of what my memories of my first car meant to me, in all of its hazy, definitely colored-by-nostalgia, rosy-tinted glory. I didn’t see a whole lot of people paying much attention to it for any other reason than sheer novelty, which is fair. There is also the fact that this Corolla seems to be inspired by a similar concept for an AE86. But I just want you to know, owner of this legit off road-converted AE92 (yes, I looked under it and saw the solid rear axle, this thing is actually for real), I get it. It’s hard to catch my attention in a sea of high-power American classics which is what really gets me going these days, but this Corolla is just so far up my (dirt) alley (sorry) that I just had to give it some recognition.

Clearly, I’m just here to wax nostalgic on this one. If you’re looking for more information about this Corolla, head on over to the KC HiLites site where there is a full write up on the car which is owned by Randy Wimenta, who works for KC.